Suchergebnisse

From an early understanding of organisational theorist (Bartlett & Ghosal, 1989; 1990), the function of global teams in transnational organisations has been conceptualised as the transformation of different embedded cultural practices for the development of a global strategy, products and services. Simultaneously, in the field, from the beginning of the 1990ies to the edge of the new millennium neo-liberal political developments enforced a free flow of capital on a global level (cf. Turner, 2006). In line with the development of respective connectivity via the internet the form of globally distributed team work was spread (Maznevski & Chudoba, 2000). In a study by Biggs (2000), published just after the millennial change, it was shown that 60% of tasks in multinational companies are accomplished by virtual teams. More recent data (Society for Human Resource Management, 2012) showed that the prevalence of such teams stayed more or less constant in the last 10 years. According to the survey 66% of companies are working with distributed global teams. Globally distributed teams were already described by Bartlett and Ghosal (1989) in their functions of articulation and translation of differing market practices for the integration of requirements and needs on a global level. From a European perspective the importance to further develop innovation capabilities in order to compete in the global market is stressed today (Imp3rove, 2012). In a globalised economy not only the big multinational companies are involved in globally distributed research and development activities (R&D). On the level SMEs, for example, in Switzerland the involvement in global development processes is increasing (Gassmann, 2009). From my own experiences in working with Swiss SMEs, the macro-economic processes in regard to the strong Swiss Franc may accelerate such processes. Thus, the form of globally distributed teams, and their functional task in global development processes, can be viewed as highly relevant, in a globalised economy. The crucial question for companies at the moment is, if teams can be enabled for innovative project work, which enables the integration of diverging perspectives in a globally distributed setting? Or, if such teams have to be collocated for more innovative, interdependent task work? Requirements for integrating embedded knowledge from different regionally defined clusters into global innovations at least, seems to indicate for the relevance of interdependent globally distributed team work (cf. Li, Eden, Hitt, Ireland, & Garrett, 2012). Bilateral practices of partnering, for example in the Swiss pharmaceutical sector, lead to the integration of selected subsidiaries in the R&D process of the company (Festel et al., 2010). Thus, the form of dispersion for project teams becomes more critical for effective global R&D practices (Boyer O'Leary & Cummings, 2007). So called partially distributed teams integrating balanced subgroups between two sites, hence, become an important subject of inquiry with practical relevance. The context of partially distributed team work represents by virtue a context involving multiple perspectives influenced by the involvement of actors stemming from different cultural contexts (Dekker, Rutte, & Van den Berg, 2008). It thereby provides the synergetic potential for integrating different perspectives in the resolution of complex problems on a global level (Janssens & Brett, 2006). Simultaneously, cultural diversity engenders challenges for collaboration. Challenges, like different understandings and interpretations regarding tasks, the structuring of communication (Maznevski & Chudoba, 2000) and unexpected events occurring in the collaboration between the actors (Dekker et al., 2008; Oertel & Antoni, 2014) were identified in respective empirical studies. Opportunities and challenges of partially distributed global teams can be compared with the problematic of face-to-face (f2f) teams with a moderate amount of diversity. Studies have shown (see Thatcher & Patel, 2011 for a meta-analysis) that when the distribution of diversity characteristics is aligned to potentially form culture specific subgroups, so-called diversity faultlines (Lau & Murnighan, 1998), negative subgroup dynamics are reinforced. To achieve the above mentioned synergetic potentials it seems important to effectively cope with such negative dynamics and allow for a balanced participation in partially distributed teams (Janssens & Brett, 2006). In the research on faultline teams, especially the structuring of task-related interdependences across respective subgroups has been identified as an important impediment for the mentioned subgroup dynamics. Task interdependences, which cross functional roles across respective group faultlines (Bettencourt, Molix, Talley, & Eubanks, 2007; Marcus-Newhall, Miller, Holtz, & Brewer, 1993), are able to unlock the inherent potentials of globally distributed teams on more complex tasks that require the integration of different perspectives. From a work group diversity perspective (van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007), partially distributed global teams represent a research object for studying the interaction between social categorisation processes involved in the above mentioned subgroup dynamics, and processes of task-related information processing required for innovative team outputs. The exploration of effects of task structures on the interaction between categorisation processes and task-related information processing (van Knippenberg et al., 2004), will be in the main explorative research focus of this thesis. The research thesis represents a heuristic explorative inquiry (Kleining & Witt, 2001) of respective dynamics and structural as well as process-related enablers. The thesis starts with the theoretical part, in which the historical development of the understanding of teams as open, complex and temporally dynamic systems (Arrow et al., 2005, 2000), will be outlined. A sound definition of partially distributed global teams, including the respective contextual characteristics will be delineated. In a sensitizing framework (Blumer, 1954) which guided the explorative research process, the central boundary condition of task interdependence (Wageman, 2001) and respective episodic theories for explaining global task-related dynamics in teams (Marks et al., 2001), the dynamics of social categorisation (Gaertner, Dovidio, Anastasio, Bachman, & Rust, 1993; Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000), as well as the interaction between social categorisation processes and task-related information processing will be integrated (van Knippenberg et al., 2004). According to the framework, empirical studies on effects of task interdependence on interactions between task-related information processing and social categorisation processes will be addressed (van Knippenberg et al., 2004). The empirical part of the contribution will be split in two parts. In the first heuristic exploratory study eleven partially distributed global teams are followed up during the time of relevant innovation projects. The approach allowed the study of task interdependence, productive interactions with social categorisation processes and there effects on team innovation. In the second empirical step, the developed hypotheses, were tested in an experimental simulation (Arrow et al., 2005, 2000) in undergraduate courses. As a conclusion of the two exploratory studies, an episodic team process model will be outlined. The model specifies interdependence dynamics, which allows for team innovation. Furthermore, on a process level, the episodic categorisation-elaboration model (van Knippenberg et al., 2004) proposes three critical team performance episodes. Dynamics in the interplay between task-related information processing and social categorisation processes allow for the development of hypothesis for further research projects. Finally the implications for theory and the practical relevance of the heuristic model will be discussed.

[spa] El fenómeno global ha venido generando y promoviendo importantes cambios a nivel mundial con la finalidad de impulsar al Comercio Internacional; por lo tanto, capitalizando los beneficios derivados de la Nueva División Internacional del Trabajo, los procesos de producción se deslocalizan con el fin de obtener los mayores beneficios a nivel global; para ello, se han gestado e impulsado en su momento acciones a través de organismos internacionales como el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI), el Banco Mundial (BM) y el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID), que al otorgar apoyos a los países localizados en la periferia, sujetan muchos de estos soportes al adelgazamiento del Estado, privatizaciones, eliminación de subsidios, reformas a la seguridad social, flexibilización laboral, políticas de apertura comercial y de simplificación administrativa, tendientes a crear las condiciones que más favorezcan desplazamientos tanto de capitales como de importantes volúmenes de materias primas para su transformación. En este nuevo concierto de acciones dirigidas juegan un papel fundamental la construcción de nuevas y más grandes embarcaciones, que faciliten la transportación de grandes volúmenes de cargas, así como los puertos que para recibir a estas nuevos buques han venido transformando y modernizando sus instalaciones portuarias y vías de conectividad, con el fin de responder a estas nuevas exigencias mundiales en materia de transportación, que en la actualidad ya no dependen de los hinterlands portuarios cautivos o tradicionales, sino de las ampliaciones y extensiones alcanzadas como resultado de la creación de puertos secos y de mejores ejes carreteros y ferroviarios. Como consecuencia de estas acciones, los puertos en México, que conforman el sistema nacional portuario hasta antes de la proyección de puertos industriales en litorales mexicanos, si bien recibían inversiones por parte del gobierno federal para realizar la transformación de sus instalaciones éstas, en la mayoría de los puertos, no lograron ajustar la reestructuración a los niveles demandados; por ello se decidió apoyar la creación de puertos nuevos, dotados de estructuras modernas que respondieran al comercio internacional. En este nuevo escenario puertos como el de Tampico, que por falta de recursos se rezagó de esta dinámica, dejaban la posibilidad para que otros puertos capitalizaran los beneficios de estas adecuaciones, que en el caso de Tamaulipas, está representado por el puerto de Altamira, que en su calidad de puerto industrial, obtenía los beneficios de importantes inversiones para su construcción e inserción en el sistema portuario nacional, con el fin de aprovechar que los armadores buscan afanosamente puertos que ofrezcan las mejores condiciones para sus flujos de cargas, con los correspondientes impactos negativos para el puerto de Tampico. La metodología empleada para la realización de esta investigación fue de tipo cualitativo, ya que se consideró que al partir de lo particular hacia lo general nos permitiría identificar algunas de las causas más importantes que han marcado el declive del puerto de Tampico. Para este propósito se realizaron entrevistas semiestructuradas en profundidad con un número de personas predeterminadas para este fin, que forman parte del conglomerado de empresas con actividades ligadas, directa e indirectamente, con los puertos como agentes aduanales, agentes consignatarios de buques, transportistas autoridades portuarias, municipales, ferrocarrileros, y líderes de opinión; sus respuestas fueron clasificadas y una vez identificadas las palabras clave se procedió a su análisis. Como parte de los hallazgos, podemos citar la falta de una planeación estratégica de mediano y largo plazo, que hubiera permitido prospectar el puerto deseado para responder a las nuevas exigencias en materia de comercio internacional, y realizar las ampliaciones y modificaciones estructurales y tecnológicas indispensables, incluida la posibilidad de incrementar el calado del río o la determinación oportuna de una vocación para el puerto de Tampico, evitando los resultados de una competencia totalmente desigual entre estos puertos del mismo estado, localizados a menos de 50 kilómetros. ; [eng] The global phenomenon has been creating and promoting major changes worldwide, with the aim of promoting international trade, thus capitalizing on the benefits of the New International Division of Labour, are relocating production processes to obtain greater benefits globally, for that have gestated and driven at the time, actions by international bodies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) that by giving support to the countries located in the periphery, holding many of these supports, the thinning of the state, privatization, elimination of subsidies, social security reforms, labour deregulation, trade liberalization policies and administrative simplification, aimed at create conditions more conducive to both the capital movement of large volumes of raw materials for processing. In this new concert for action, play a fundamental role to build new and larger vessels, to facilitate the transportation of large volumes of cargo, and ports to meet these new vessels, have been transforming and modernizing its facilities connectivity ports and roads, to meet these new global demands on transportation, which now no longer rely on captive or traditional port hinterlands, but additions and extensions, reached as a result of the creation of dry ports and better road and rail axes. As a result of these actions, the ports in Mexico, which make up the national port system even before the screening of Mexican coastal industrial ports, while receiving investment from the federal government to perform the transformation of its facilities, these, in the most ports restructuring failed to adjust the levels defendants, it was decided to support the creation of new ports, equipped with modern structures, to respond to international trade. In this new scenario ports like Tampico, that lack of resources fell behind in this trend, leaving the possibility that other ports capitalize on the benefits of these adjustments, which in the case of Tamaulipas, is represented by the port of Altamira that as the industrial port, got the benefits of major investment for construction and integration in the national port system in order to take advantage of the owners, who zealously ports offering the best conditions for their cargo flows , with corresponding negative impacts to the port of Tampico. The methodology for conducting this research was qualitative, as it was felt that from the particular to the general, allow us to identify some of the major causes that have marked the decline of the port of Tampico. For this purpose ended interviews in depth with a number of defaults for this purpose, as part of the conglomerate of companies with activities related, directly and indirectly with the port and, custom brokers, agents, shipping agents, carriers, port authorities , municipal, railroad, and opinion leaders, their responses were classified and identified after the keywords, then analyzed. As part of the findings, we can cite the lack of strategic planning and long-term prospect that would have allowed the desired port, to meet the new requirements of international trade, and make additions and structural and technological changes necessary including the possibility of increasing the depth of the river or the timely identification of a vocation to the port of Tampico, avoiding the results of a totally unequal competition between these ports from the same state, located less than 50 miles.

This study investigates academic relations of educators, tutors, and students in university settings. Academic relations refer to the controlling and productive relations of power that operate at both societal and interpersonal level between academic actors and through them, knowledge is produced and identities are constructed. From a Critical theoretical point of view, power is unequally distributed in society and psychological development is fundamentally mediated by power relations which are socially and historically constituted. Given the capacity of power configurations to influence learning coupled with the fact that such relations are both relational and psychological, the notion of unequal social power is critical to understanding academic relations in university settings. The psychological and relational aspects of power suggest that underprepared students from disadvantaged academic backgrounds may suffer a sense of powerlessness and social domination as they interact with academics and more capable peers from privileged academic backgrounds. Research suggests that students (especially the previously disadvantaged) form peer-based knowledge sharing clusters (for example, study groups) to augment their intellectual potential and resource limitations. Mindful of these underprepared students' social domination (social and psychological) by high achieving peers and academics, and the capacity of peer-based clusters/ relations to democratise academic relations through presenting opportunities for exchange of perspectives, these peer-based relations present viable proxies for unpacking academic relations. The problem, therefore, is that while academic relations (lecturer-student, tutor-student, and student-peer) in face-to-face contact are quite central to student meaningful learning and transformation, capturing and studying these relations is complex. This complexity is explicated by the incapacity of traditional classrooms to capture and sustain academic relations due to: 1) The temporality, time and spatially bounded nature of academic relations in class, 2) Class sizes, academics' huge workloads and time constraints that limit one-on-one lecturer-student engagements especially at undergraduate level 3) Transmission pedagogy and classroom space configuration that mute lateral discourses, and 4) Student complex histories and cultural diversity. Research suggests that student knowledge sharing clusters are shifting from face-to-face to social networking sites (SNS), that is, online social networks that support group collaboration vii and support. The persistence of these online interactions, opportunities for peer-based discourses, peer-generation of artefacts on SNS challenge the limitations of traditional classrooms, making SNS essential for unpacking classroom lecturer-student and student-peer relations by proxy (if academics participate). These opportunities, and computer-mediated communication theory' suggestion that computer-mediated nature of textual interaction has potential to undermine status, gender and power asymmetries built in face-to-face interaction inform my thesis that SNS interaction has potential to equalise power relations of academic actors. The goal of this study was therefore, to use lecturer-student, student-peer interaction on SNS as proxies for unpacking academic relations and learning that unfold in traditional academic settings (classrooms, computer laboratories). The research question instigated the impact of lecturer-student, student-peer interaction on the academic /power relations and learning of academics and students in formal university settings. Using a Critical ethnographic approach, the research investigated power relations and learning manifested in: 1. academics and student text-based messages posted on SNS (Facebook), 2. lecturer and student experiences of using Facebook and its influence on classroom interactions, and 3. Lecturer-student and student peer interactions in class. Mindful of the democratisation potential of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on previously disadvantaged learners, the relational nature of power, the influence of structural forces on mediated interaction and higher mental development, this research was informed by three theories namely, Critical Theory of Technology (CTT), Critical Theories of Power (CTP), and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), respectively. As a participant observer in online ethnography, the researcher employed CTT to examine the democratisation potential and constraints of computer-mediated communication (that is SNS) on learning and academic relations. While CTT was useful for examining the technological effects on mediated learning, the theory was less insightful for unpacking the power contestations in text-mediated discourses. To this end, Critical Discourse Analysis' (CDA) (which draws on CTP) was employed to examine how vertical and horizontal relational power were articulated and contested via textual messages, to complement CTT in its limitations. Although CTP was insightful for the examination of power manifested in lecturer-student, and peer-based interaction, CTP equally proved inadequate for the examination of mediated learning, that is, the role of artefact-mediated action on psychological development. Mindful viii of CHAT's focus on the influence of symbolic mediation on psychological development, CHAT offered a rational complement to CTP for the examination of mediated learning. This was important given that this research on academic/power relations and student learning unfolded in a technology-mediated learning environment (that is SNS). CHAT was adopted as a theoretical and methodological approach to examine how mediated interaction and the interplay of different elements of the lecture activity system impacted on student psychological development and lecturer's teaching practices. In summary, the study examined these empirical materials: text-based interactions (lecturer and student Facebook postings), lecturer and student narratives of lectures and Facebook interactions (interview transcripts, lecturer debriefings after classroom observations), in-class actions and discourses (lecture observations and focus group discussions). The findings of this study are that SNS democratized academic relations and communication for academically inclined students through: widening the academic networking space, breaching lecturer-student social boundaries that often hindered student access to knowledge resources, and offering 'safe haven' for student contestation of unpopular academic practices. Facebook also allowed shy and timid students to be more assertive in requesting academic support. The unintended effect of SNS was that it reconfigured peer-based relations as high achievers assumed additional vertical, 'super tutor' roles of advising peers. Facebook also regulated in-class interaction by hiving off mundane questions on course administration and practicals from the class. SNS thus augmented classroom interaction as online and classroom learning cross fertilised each other. The practical contribution of this work is in the insight into how student informal academic and social support online networks could be drawn upon in student in-class learning. The study proposed a 'best practice' pedagogical model/ strategy that draws on: 1) Informal peer-based and lecturer-student knowledge sharing on Facebook and associated SN tools, 2). Student reflexivity on self-generated and peer-generated content, and 3). Self and peer-based evaluation as a basis for academic empowerment. The theoretical contribution lies in the methodology or approach for analysing the interplay between academic relations and student learning using SNS as proxy. In particular, this work contributes a new body of knowledge through the integration of Critical Theories (Critical Theories of Power and Critical Theories of Technology) and CHAT.

[eng] The purpose of the present thesis is to be a basic and initial contribution to the knowledge about the corrosive behaviour of the archwires commonly used in lingual orthodontics. Once corrosive behaviour is understood, conclusions could be drawn regarding clinical implications both for the progress of the treatment and the patients' safety. The archwires chosen for the study were:1. Respond® 0.0175 inches 2. D-Rect® 0.016x0,022 inches 3. Stainless Steel 0.016 inches 4. Stainless Steel 0.016x0,022 inches 5. Ni-Ti® 0.016 inches 6. TMA® 0.016 inches 7. Copper Ni-Ti® 0.017x0.017 inches. The objectives of the thesis are: 1. To study the as-received microscopical aspect of the lingual orthodontics archwires and the surface structural changes of the archwires after being in contact with a saline preparation for 30 days through scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) 2. To study the basic corrosive properties of the archwires in order to determine the potential of corrosion and the pitting potential for each archwire and also the microscopical effects of corrosion on archwires with SEM and AFM after anodic potentiostatic polarization. 3. To study the ionic release of Ni of the Ni containing archwires to evaluate its potential danger for the patient. 4. To evaluate the changes that corrosion may have on the martensitic and austenitic phase transformations of the nickel and titanium containing archwires. The highest tendency to general corrosion was seen for Respond archwires followed by D-Rect and 0.016 inch Stainless Steel archwires. Cyclic Voltammetry results showed that Ecorr values were similar for Respond, D-Rect and 0.016x0.022 Stainless Steel archwires being the 0.016 Stainless Steel archwires the most prone to corrosion processes. It was seen that archwires made of Ti alloys were highly resistant to general corrosion processes. The lowest Eb values were obtained for Respond archwires followed by D-Rect and 0.016 Stainless Steel archwires. Higher values were observed for 0.016x0.022 Stainless Steel archwires. AFM enabled an objective characterisation of surface changes by measuring the Roughness Mean Surface (RMS). This value allowed a comparison between archwires immersed in Hank's Balanced Salt Solution for 30 days and a control group. Results show statistically significant differences after immersion for all archwires with the exception of NiTi archwires. Scanning electronic microscopy did not enable to see differences between both groups. Ni release has been seen to be very low and it is far below the limits set by the European Union legislation and the levels known to inflict cell damage. The highest amount of Ni was released by the Stainless Steel archwires followed by Respond and NiTi archwires. The lowest amounts of Ni released were recorded for CuNiTi and D-Rect archwires. With regards to calorimetry, NiTi archwires showed a clear R-phase while none of the CuNiTi archwires did in the new, polarised and immersed groups. Immersion seems to have no impact on the phase transition temperatures of NiTi archwires while some changes observed in CuNiTi arches should be further studied. ; [spa] Esta tesis pretende realizar un estudio de los arcos diseñados específicamente para la técnica de ortodoncia lingual y contribuir al conocimiento de su comportamiento. Particularmente se centra en los cambios de las propiedades superficiales de los arcos, su desprendimiento iónico, y en los arcos en que corresponde, la variación de propiedades que afectan a la expresión de la memoria de forma. Se estudiaron los siguientes arcos: 1. Respond® 0.0175 pulgadas. 2. D-Rect® 0.016 x 0.022 pulgadas 3. Stainless Steel 0.016 pulgadas. 4. Stainless Steel 0.016 x 0.022 pulgadas 5. Ni-Ti® 0.016 pulgadas 6. TMA® 0.016 pulgadas 7. Copper Ni-Ti® 0.017 x 0.017 pulgadas. En concreto, se han establecido los siguientes objetivos: 1. Caracterizar microscópicamente (microscopía electrónica de barrido o SEM) los arcos de ortodoncia lingual tal y como son recibidos del fabricante y comparar los efectos que tiene el contacto durante 30 días de una solución que simula las propiedades de la saliva sobre los arcos, caracterizando los cambios ocurridos con SEM y de fuerzas atómicas (AFM). 2. Caracterizar las propiedades corrosivas básicas de los arcos de ortodoncia lingual para conocer el potencial de corrosión, los potenciales de picadura para cada arco y los efectos que la polarización anódica potenciostática tiene sobre la superficie de los arcos con SEM. 3. Determinar el desprendimiento iónico de Ni de los arcos linguales de aleaciones que contienen Ni. 4. Evaluar los cambios que la inmersión de los arcos en solución de saliva artificial y los arcos sometidos a corrosión potenciostática tienen sobre las temperaturas de transformación de fase de los arcos de aleaciones NiTi y CuNiTi. La mayor tendencia a la corrosión general se ha visto en los arcos Respond, D-Rect y acero inoxidable 0,016 pulgadas. Los resultados de CV han mostrado que los valores de Ecorr fueron muy similares para los arcos Respond, D-Rect y de acero inoxidable de 0,016x0,022 pulgadas. Los arcos de acero inoxidable de 0,016 pulgadas obtuvieron el valor más bajo de Ecorr, indicando ser el más sensible a los procesos de corrosión. Se observó que los arcos de aleación de Ti son muy resistentes a los procesos de corrosión general Los valores más pequeños de Eb fueron obtenidos para los arcos de Respond, seguidos por los D-Rect y los arcos de acero inoxidable de 0,016 pulgadas. Se observaron valores de Eb en un rango más alto para los arcos de acero inoxidable de 0,016x0,022 pulgadas. La técnica microscópica de AFM ha permitido caracterizar de una forma objetiva la de su rugosidad superficial (RMS). Este valor se ha comparado con los valores de rugosidad en muestras que permanecieron 30 días expuestas al contacto con la solución de Hank. Los resultados obtenidos muestran diferencias estadísticamente significativas excepto para los arcos de NiTi Se ha visto que el desprendimiento de Ni es muy pequeño y que está muy por debajo de los límites establecidos por la regulación vigente en la Unión Europea, y por debajo de los límites conocidos como nocivos para las células. La mayor cantidad de Ni ha sido desprendida por los arcos de acero inoxidable, seguidos por el Respond y los arcos de NiTi. Los arcos de CuNiTi y D-Rect fueron los que desprendieron menores cantidades de Ni al final de la prueba. Por lo que respecta al estudio de calorimetría, no se ha hallado la fase R en los ensayos de calorimetría con los arcos de CuNiTi (nuevos, usados en prueba de inmersión de 30 días y los polarizados), en los de NiTi sí. La inmersión de los arcos de NiTi en solución de Hank parece no tener ningún impacto en las temperaturas de transición de fase.

I. Objetivos 1) Analizar el cambio del papel social que ha sufrido el periodismo en las últimas décadas. 2) Describir la crisis del sector en sus principales dimensiones (de rentabilidad de las empresas periodísticas, de pérdida de audiencias, de reducción del volumen publicitario y su efectividad, de calidad de la información y de prestigio social) y comprobar su relación con el cambio del papel social del periodismo, para verificar que la crisis del periodismo actual y del negocio de la comunicación tiene su origen en las prácticas empresariales poco éticas, en la visión del periodismo como un negocio, en lugar de un servicio público. 3) Evaluar el papel que han desempeñado las nuevas tecnologías en esta crisis. 4) Prever las tendencias de la nueva realidad comunicativa. 5) Determinar el rol y responsabilidad de los periodistas en el proceso de cambio del periodismo, su pérdida de autonomía y de influencia en las informaciones publicadas. 6) Evaluar la alienación informativa de la audiencia, así como su capacidad de autodeterminación frente a los mensajes informativos y el protagonismo que la reacción de las audiencias (su fraccionamiento o el periodismo 3.0) puede haber tenido en la crisis estructural del negocio informativo. 7) Investigar qué nuevos problemas éticos ha generado el proceso de transformación del periodismo y la crisis informativa. 8) Establecer qué propuestas en el campo de la ética pueden permitir una recuperación de la dimensión político-social de la información para contribuir a la democracia en la nueva realidad comunicativa. II. Metodología Partiendo del estudio de una amplia selección publicaciones, se han incorporado análisis de comunicólogos, testimonios profesionales, estudios de normas jurídicas, referencias históricas sobre periodismo, entrevistas, análisis de datos, reflexiones de periodistas veteranos y empresarios de la comunicación, referencias económicas del sector y propuestas desde numerosos ámbitos. III. Conclusiones 1. La gestión empresarial del periodismo como un gran negocio ha conllevado un cambio sustancial en el papel social que los ciudadanos, los sistemas políticos democráticos y sus leyes fundamentales le asignaron, empequeñeciendo su labor social y agigantando el beneficio privado. 2. La explotación comercial de los medios de comunicación, productos y tecnología de la comunicación de masas generó, a partir de los años ochenta del siglo pasado, una expansión económica en este sector empresarial impulsada por el éxito comercial en la televisión. 3. El productivismo y la rentabilidad económica guían hoy la gestión de los medios de comunicación, dirigiendo la inversión empresarial a las aplicaciones tecnológicas en detrimento de la calidad de los contenidos y de la estabilidad de las plantillas periodísticas, todo ello supeditado ahora a la agenda informativa y a los intereses de las fuentes estables. 4. La salida a la crisis del periodismo supondrá una importante transformación de las formas de explotación, emisión y consumo. El futuro estará más marcado por la tecnología, una rentabilidad más compleja y un comportamiento de las audiencias más activo y menos masivo: separación del producto respecto del soporte; la prensa escrita ahondará en su crisis pero no desaparecerá; puede haber fórmulas de convergencia digital, como la hubo audiovisual; el periodismo social o 3.0 seguirá adelante, aunque no está clara su relación con las formas actuales de periodismo comercial ni con las futuras; surgirán nuevos modelos de negocio que hoy no se vislumbran; habrá buen periodismo, pero posiblemente no estará en los medios y productos actuales; el futuro del periodismo lo decidirá la rentabilidad, aunque al margen o paralelamente pueden tener un gran éxito formas no rentables de periodismo, aunque no sea de grandes audiencias. 5. Los periodistas han perdido en las redacciones gran parte de su autonomía profesional y de su capacidad de influencia en la elaboración y presentación final de las informaciones. Los profesionales se enfrentan a las presiones internas de sus jefes para no dañar los intereses económicos aliados con la empresa informativa, y a las limitaciones que impone el productivismo, la autocensura y unas condiciones laborales pésimas. 6. La audiencia en conjunto sufre un proceso de alienación informativa que contrasta con el aumento de la autodeterminación de los individuos, que se expresa en reacciones como el periodismo 3.0 o periodismo ciudadano. 7. El cambio del papel social del periodismo, el hiperdesarrollo comunicativo, la concepción de la información como negocio, la crisis del sector y las nuevas tecnologías han agravado los problemas éticos clásicos y han surgido otros problemas éticos de segunda generación. 8. La ética periodística y la calidad de los contenidos constituyen dos aspectos esenciales para la construcción de un nuevo sistema informativo que recupere el equilibrio entre la función social y el beneficio empresarial. Palabras clave Ética / periodismo / ética periodística / periodistas / contrapoder / periodismo 3.0 / autorregulación / deontología / cuarto poder / objetividad I. Objectives 1) To analyse the change that journalism has undergone over recent decades in terms of its social role. 2) To describe the main aspects of the crisis suffered by the sector (the profitability of newspaper corporations, the loss of audience, the reduction in the volume of advertising and its effectiveness, the quality of information and social prestige) and to examine its relation with the change in the social role played by journalism in order to demonstrate that the current crisis in journalism and the communication business is a result of business practices which are unethical and a perspective that sees journalism as a business instead of a public service. 3) To evaluate the role played by new technologies in this crisis. 4) To anticipate the future trends of the new reality of communications. 5) To determine the role and responsibility of journalists in the process of change being experienced by journalism and their loss of autonomy and influence in terms of the information published. 6) To evaluate the informational alienation experienced by the audience, as well as their capacity for forming their own views on the information received, and the key role that audience responses (audience attrition or journalism 3.0) may have played in the structural crisis of the information sector. 7) To investigate the new ethical problems that have emerged from the transformation of journalism and the media crisis. 8) To establish which proposals in the field of ethics may enable a recovery of the politico-social dimension of information, thus contributing towards democracy in the new reality of communications. II. Methodology Drawing on a wide selection of publications, this study incorporates analyses carried out by communication theorists, testimonials from professionals, studies of legal standards, historical references to journalism, interviews, data analysis, reflections provided by veteran journalists and communication enterprises, economic references from the sector and proposals from numerous fields. III Conclusions 1. The fact that journalism has been managed in the same way as a large-scale business has resulted in a significant change in the social role assigned to it by citizens, democratic political systems and their fundamental laws, with its social function being played down while the private gain derived from it is increased. 2. From the 1980s onwards, the commercial exploitation of the media, as well as mass media products and technologies, has led to the economic expansion of this business sector driven by the commercial success of television. 3. Today, the media is managed in a way that is driven by productivity and economic profitability, directing business investment into technological applications to the detriment of the quality of contents and the stability of the journalism industry workforce, which are now subordinated to the news agenda and the vested interests of the stable sources. 4. In order to overcome this crisis, journalism will need to undergo a significant transformation in terms of its exploitation, broadcasting/publication and consumption. The future will be increasingly marked by technology, more complex profitability, and with audience behaviour which is less massive and more active. Other factors will include the following: the separation of the product from its support; the written press will fall into a deeper crisis but will not disappear entirely; possible new formulas for digital convergence as there were with audiovisual forms; social journalism or journalism 3.0 will continue to move forward, although its relation with current and future forms of commercial journalism is unclear; new business models will emerge which have not been contemplated up to now; good journalism will be available, but it is possible that this may not take the same form as the means and products currently available; the future of journalism will be decided by profitability, although non-profit-making forms of journalism may be successful in parallel with or on the fringes of traditional forms, even if these new forms do not attract large audiences. 5. Journalists have lost a significant amount of professional autonomy when writing up their reports, as well as their capacity to influence the end result and the presentation of their work. Professionals are faced with the internal pressures applied by their bosses so as not to damage the economic interests allied to the news corporation, and with the limitations imposed by the emphasis on productivity, self-censorship and poor working conditions. 6. The entire audience suffers from informational alienation that contrasts with the increase in the self-determination of individuals which is expressed in responses such as journalism 3.0 or citizen journalism. 7. The changing social role of journalism, the hyper-development of communications, the conception of information as business, the crisis in the sector, as well as new technologies, have aggravated traditional ethical problems and other second-generation ethical problems have emerged. 8. Journalism ethics and the quality of contents constitute two crucial elements in the construction of a different kind of information system capable of restoring the balance between its social function and business profit. Key words Ethics / journalism / journalism ethics / journalists / countervailing / journalism 3.0 / self-regulation / deontology / fourth estate / objectivity

[spa] Para hacer estudios en Ciencias Ambientales se requiere un nuevo tipo de Ciencia en que el conocimiento sea socialmente robusto y políticamente relevante. Una manera para lograrlo es haciendo diagnósticos científicos que sirvan de base para hacer, luego, mejores diagnósticos con la sociedad. Algunos atributos generales de este tipo de estudios son: se obtienen resultados rápidamente, usando datos disponibles; se integra información de diversas fuentes; se reconoce la incertidumbre de los datos, de su tratamiento y de las interpretaciones que se hagan sobre ellos, y se buscan grandes tendencias, más que resultados precisos. Las ciudades pueden ser investigadas por cualquier disciplina científica. A partir de teorías y metodologías de la Ecología de Ecosistemas y de Paisajes es posible diseñar análisis jerárquicos espacio-temporalmente, para evaluar la relación entre la estructura y la función del paisaje urbano. El concepto de Servicios Ecosistémicos representa una asociación entre naturaleza y bienestar humano. Además, pueden ser medidos como flujos biofísicos (materia y energía) entre ecosistemas, esto es, la función del paisaje. Los Servicios Ecosistémicos cambian si la estructura del paisaje se modifica. La Ecología Urbana, en tanto, es una subdisciplina en desarrollo enfocada en entender el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas y paisajes urbanos, usando conocimientos de la ecología, pero también de otras disciplinas, como la geografía y la historia. Distintas investigaciones en ecología urbana han mostrado que la urbanización tiene un efecto negativo dramático en el paisaje y reduce la producción de servicios ecosistémicos, provocando cambios en la evaporación, la humedad del aire, la velocidad del viento, la infiltración del agua, la escorrentía superficial, la absorción de gases, la extracción de material particulado y la temperatura superficial. En Santiago de Chile, 140 años de expansión urbana han transformado ecosistemas naturales en ecosistemas urbanos. Muchos autores han evaluado los efectos de este proceso sobre los servicios ecosistémicos, siendo claras las consecuencias negativas en aspectos hídricos y meteorológicos pero no tan clara en aquellos relacionados con la calidad del aire, dado que los árboles urbanos contribuyen a su mejoramiento. La Dehesa (1916 ha) es un nuevo barrio (1980's) de la comuna de Lo Barnechea. Está localizado en el nor-oriente de Santiago de Chile y en una microcuenca diferente a aquella en donde viven la mayor parte de los habitantes de Santiago. Algunas de sus características son: (1) está dominado por casas que tienen más de 200 m2 de superficie construida, (2) sus casas son mayoritariamente aisladas y (3) tiene amplias áreas verdes, parques y bandejones vegetados. En términos de caracterización socioeconómica, La Dehesa tiene un 43% de hogares con la mayor categoría de ingresos (ABC1), siendo superados sólo por las vecinas comunas de Vitacura (59%) y Las Condes (49%). Ecológicamente, el paisaje está actualmente urbanizado. Su estado inmediatamente anterior fue un espinal. Esta formación vegetacional es el resultado del abandono agrícola y una larga historia (200 años) de clareo, desmonte y carboneo, transformando la vegetación esclerófila nativa y la xerofítica nativa, que actualmente se conserva exclusivamente en áreas restauradas o protegidas naturalmente por su geomorfología. El análisis jerárquico espacio-temporal diseñado incluyó fotointerpretación de imágenes satelitales y fotografías aéreas, para describir los cambios estructurales del paisaje en los últimos años (1975-2010). A través de la fotointerpretación de imágenes de muy alta resolución (obtenidas de Google Earth Pro) y las categorías de usos de suelo "HERCULES" (High Ecological Resolution Classification for Urban Landscapes and Environmental Systems); se calculó que la transformación desde espinal a urbano aumentó la cobertura vegetación en un 18% en seis años (2004-2010). Adicionalmente, las imágenes LANDSAT informaron sobre un 33% de aumento en el NDVI en 20 años (1989-2009) a nivel del área urbanizada. La superficie de las áreas urbanizadas aumentó en un 8% entre 2002 y 2009 a nivel de la microcuenca donde se ubica, mientras el grado de urbanización aumentó un 19% dentro del área urbanizada (2004-2010). Se delimitó cada tipo de ecosistemas en el paisaje, usando como variables de homogeneidad: grado de urbanización y cobertura de vegetación a nivel del área urbana. En cada ecosistema se estimó la producción de servicios ecosistémicos a partir de referencias internacionales. Todos estos cambios en la estructura del paisaje tuvieron un efecto positivo para la producción de servicios ecosistémicos de regulación hídrica, de regulación del clima y de mejoramiento de la calidad del aire. Si las tendencias de transformación del paisaje continúan como hasta ahora, la producción seguirá creciendo. Estos datos muestran un paradigma innovador: la urbanización puede incrementar la producción de servicios de la naturaleza, en el corto y mediano plazo, proporcionando beneficios ecológicos diarios a las personas que habitan en el paisaje. Sin embargo, este fenómeno se expresa en una condición socioeconómica que es exclusiva, escasa y espacialmente segregada. Estructuralmente, la urbanización tiene una baja densidad y requiere de grandes cantidades de agua para el riego de las áreas verdes y recursos económicos para su mantención, entre otros costos. Vista la relación positiva, y posible de lograr, entre ciudad y naturaleza, la siguiente pregunta es qué tanto es posible urbanizar y naturalizar al mismo tiempo. Cuáles son las consecuencias de un fuerte incremento de la cobertura vegetacional en un paisaje semiárido es otro punto de interés, especialmente desde una perspectiva hídrica, en un contexto de futura escasez de agua. El desarrollo de estrategias de gestión ambiental para comunas y proyectos inmobiliarios representa una oportunidad y una innovación, debido a que ahora, tras esta investigación, podemos estimar la producción de servicios ecosistémicos y esquematizar sus direcciones de flujo. De esta manera, los efectos negativos pueden ser mitigados o compensados, y los efectos positivos, potenciados. ; [eng] Environmental Sciences Studies require of a new kind of Science, where knowledge is robust and politically relevant. One way to achieve this purpose is making scientific diagnosis as basis to make diagnosis with Society. Some general attributes of this kind of studies are: to be able to obtain result fast using available data; to integrate information of different sources; to recognize uncertainties of data, its management and interpretations, and looking for significant trends more than precise results. Cities could be researched by any scientific discipline. Following theories and methodologies from Landscape and Ecosystem Ecology is possible to design a hierarchical spatio-temporal analysis to assess relationship between urban landscape structure and function. Ecosystem Services concept represents an association between nature and human wellbeing. Also, they could be measured as biophysical (matter and energy) flows among ecosystems, i.e. landscape function. Ecosystem Services changes if landscape structure is modified. Urban Ecology is a developing subdiscipline focus in to understand the functioning of urban ecosystems and landscapes, using knowledge from ecology but also from other disciplines, like geography and history. Urban ecology research has showed that urbanization has dramatic negative effects on landscape and reduces ecosystem services production, making changes in evaporation, air humidity, wind velocity, water infiltration, surface runoff, gases absorption, particulate matter extraction and surface temperature. In Santiago de Chile, 140 years of urban development have transformed natural ecosystems in urban ecosystems. Many authors have assessed the effects of this process on ecosystem services, being clear the negative consequences in hydric and meteorological aspects, but not so clear in those related with air quality, because urban trees help to improve it. La Dehesa (1916 ha) is a new neighbourhood (1980s) of Lo Barnechea district. It is located in the north-east of Santiago de Chile. It is in a watershed different of the one where the major part of Santiago inhabitants live. Some of its characteristics are: (1) to be dominated with houses that have more than 200m2 of built surface, (2) its houses are detached and (3) to have vast green areas, parks and central median strip plenty of vegetation and grass. In terms of socioeconomic characterization, La Dehesa has a 43% of houses with the highest incomes (ABC1), being overcome only by Vitacura (59%) and Las Condes (49%) districts. Ecologically, the landscape is nowadays urbanized. Before this, its immediately previous state was an espinal. This vegetal formation is the result of agricultural abandonment and a longer history (200 years) of clearing, cutting and charcoal production, transforming native sclerophyllous vegetation and native xerofitic vegetation, which currently is conserved only in geomorphological protected areas and restored areas. We design a spatio-temporal hierarchical analysis that included photointerpretation of satellite and airborne imagery to described structural changes in the last years. Using photointerpretation of very high resolution imagery (from Google Earth Pro) and HERCULES (High Ecological Resolution Classification for Urban Landscapes and Environmental Systems) land uses categories; we calculated that the transformation from espinal to urban increased vegetation cover was 18% in 6 years (2004-2010). Additionally, LANDSAT imagery analysis showed a 33% increase in NDVI index in 20 years (1989-2009) at urbanized area level. Surface of urbanized areas increased in 8% between 2002 and 2009 at watershed level (using Aster imagery), while urbanization degree increased a 19% inside the urbanized area (2004-2010). We delimited each type of ecosystems in the landscape using as variables of homogeneity: urbanization degree and vegetation cover at urbanized area level. In each ecosystem we estimated production of ecosystem services based in international references. All these landscape changes have had positive effects in the ecosystem services production of hydric regulation, climate regulation and air quality improvement. If landscape transformation trends continue as described previously, the production will continue to grow. These data show an innovative paradigm: urbanization can increase nature services in short and medium term, providing daily ecological benefits to people living in the landscape. However, this phenomenon is expressed in a socioeconomic condition that is exclusive, scarce and spatially segregated. Structurally, urbanization has low density and requires large amount of water for irrigation of green areas and economic resources for maintenance, among other costs. Shown the feasible positive feedback between city and nature, the next question is how much is feasible to urbanize and to naturalize at the same time. What are the consequences of a strong increase of vegetation cover in semiarid landscape is another point of interest, especially from a hydric perspective in a context of future water scarcity. Developing environmental management strategies for district and real-state projects represents an opportunity and an innovation, because now we can estimate ecosystem services production and schematize its flow directions. So, negative effects could be mitigated or offset, and positive effects could be promoted.

 This post is illustrated by some of the promo work I have done for the bookI have commented before, more than once even, that the intersection of Spinoza and Marx is less a position, something like Spinozist Marxism, than a field of intersecting problems and questions. In some sense it is possible to even map out the way in which different Marxists draw from different elements of Marx (and Spinoza) creating different articulations of the relations which intersect with different problems in the critique of capitalism. For Louis Althusser the important parts of Spinoza are the critique of the imagination (found in the Appendix to Part One of the Ethics), the theory of the different types of knowledge (IIP40Schol), as well as "God is the immanent, not the transitive cause of all things" (IIP18). Of course such a list begins to reflect divisions and tensions in Althusser's writing: the imagination is integral to his theory of ideology, immanent causality to his understanding of structure and the mode of production, while the different types of knowledge persists throughout Althusser's writing as a kind of philosophy of philosophical practice. While for Frédéric Lordon the central thesis of Spinoza is less epistemological or ontological than it is anthropological. It is the centrality of desire, "as the very essence of man, insofar as it is determined from any affection, to do something," coupled with the fundamental misrecognition of that desire, the fundamental illusion of a free choice which leads the infant to believe it freely wants milk, and more to the point, the worker to believe that he or she freely wants to work. For Etienne Balibar the central thesis is perhaps Proposition 37 of Part IV of the Ethics, and more importantly its two demonstrations which map out the constitution of a real, or rational, and imagined, or affective basis of sociality.  We could also flip this formulation, asking not what aspect, or proposition from Spinoza plays a central role, but what problem from Marx. Ideology can already be seen to be the answer in the case of Althusser (and a different way in Lordon and Balibar), while for Antonio Negri the connection passes through production, through the question of what does it mean to think of history and society as something that is produced and reproduced through our action and lives. A different focus on labor, or praxis can be found in André Tosel, whose work is an attempt to think through what it means to think of praxis as poeisis and poeisis as praxis, making as doing and doing as making. This Marxist problem if fundamentally informed by the Spinozist idea that every finite thing, every mode, acts, or rather operates in and through other modes.The list goes on, and one could map out a whole set of definitions of Spinozist Marxism which would be different intersections of propositions and problems from each.  The question I have been thinking about is given this field in which every position has already in some sense been occupied how is it possible to make a new intervention. Or put differently what particular proposition and what particular problem does The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work articulate, or think together. If I had to pick one I would say that it is the famous, or infamous Proposition 7 from Part Two, "The the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things." Of course this claim is something that every interpretation of Spinoza must ultimately wrestle with, and one could chart out the various neo-Spinozisms in terms of how they make sense of the identity and difference of things and ideas, bodies and minds. To be more specific I would say that it is a matter of thinking this as a formulation of ideology. As I write in the book,  "...Grasped in terms of a post-Spinozist social theory, it is possible to argue that Spinoza's formulation can productively paired with Marx's assertion of the identity of consciousness and life. Ideas and the imagination, like bodies and desires, must be grasped in terms of both of their internal striving, their consistency, and of their finitude, their determination. Contrary to a long-standing bias in the history of philosophy to treat ideas and things as two fundamentally different orders of reality, Spinoza posits a fundamental identity of thought and existence—, an identity that, paradoxically, makes it possible to grasp their points of divergence and intersection. Of course, as I have already argued, the very idea of ideology necessarily presupposes a difference as well as an identity; in order to be the ruling ideas, the concepts and narratives that rule ideas must be different from the experience and conditions they rule over in order to be the ruling ideas, but, at the same time, they must be produced by those conditions. There is a limited efficacy of true ideas insofar as they are true; ideas do not have effects on their own, but require conditions in order to exist and be disseminated. Spinoza's assertion regarding true ideas can be understood as a mirror image of Marx's claim regarding ideology. As Étienne Balibar describes the structure of ideology in The German Ideology,"The ideological mechanism, which can equally be read as a social process, will come to be seen as an astonishing conversion of impotence into domination: the abstraction of consciousness, which is an expression of consciousness's incapacity to act in reality … becomes the source of power precisely because it is "'autonomized." Contrary to his critical contemporaries, such as Feuerbach and Stirner, who believed in the power of ideas, and thus the weapon of criticism, Marx underscores that ideas only have power, only have effects, under particular material conditions that give some no time to think and others the means to spread and disseminate their ideas. Ideas have a causality that is not derived not from them as ideas, but from the social relations that produce and circulate them."First this has to be thought of in terms of identity, ideas are nothing other than the existing relation between things, the different material relations expressed differently. In other words, to quickly allude to something that the book develops over a few pages, the idea that there is ethical and moral worth to work, that have "grind" mindset, are the key to not only material success but spiritual worth as well, is nothing other than the material conditions, precarity, gig economy, and so on, rendered in ideal or conceptual forms. A person who feels that their self value and self worth can be measured in terms of how much they work is nothing other than the consciousness of labor power itself. In other words, the order and connection of ideology is the same as the order and connection of exploitation. Just as Spinoza argues that desire is nothing other than an idea of our appetite, the body's needs in mental form, our ideas about work, which make it the key to worth and self-value, are nothing other than our position within the economy in material form. (This is something central to another Marxist/Spinozist thinker, Franck Fischbach, who has argued that the conditions of intellectual life are the same as that of material life. As Fischbach writes, "If it is true that 'the production of ideas, of ideas, representations and consciousness (...) is the language of real life" then the production of ideologies, of inadequate representations, is the language of life incomplete, inadequate, and mutilated." Mind and body are two different ways of grasping the same thing. 

Such a formulation seems crude, deterministic, and in some sense more vulgar than the most vulgar of materialisms; it posits us all as spiritual automatons whose thoughts and ideas do nothing more than express, in a different attribute, what is already given in our material condition, in the relations of bodies. Things are complicated quite a bit by subsequent propositions which assert that only a body can affect or determine a body and only an idea can affect or determine an idea. The assertion of identity, ideas and things, mind and body, as two different ways of looking at the same thing, has as it paradoxical corollary the assertion of difference, mind and body as two fundamentally different ways of acting and reacting, each with their own causal orders and connections that are entirely independent. This is a particular dense metaphysical knot of identity and difference, but I am more interested in how it plays out practically, politically, as a way of thinking about ideas and bodies, base and superstructure Much could be said about the way this plays out in Spinoza's text, especially in Part IV of the Ethics, to underscore the limited efficacy of the true insofar as it is true, of the way in which ideas cannot change the world without becoming lived in bodies. As I argue in the book (following Tosel) Spinoza's formulation makes it possible to think of the particular double determination of ideas and bodies. That each are in some sense determined by being reflections of the same thing, the same relations, but are also determined in a particular manner by other ideas or other bodies. In other words, returning to the problem of the book, as much as the centrality of work as that which give people meaning and value can be understood to be just capitalism rendered into an idea it is also an effect of a long series of transformations within the realm of ideas from the protestant revolution onward. To put it bluntly the response to the long debate between Marx and Weber, between material determination and cultural history, is quite simply, "Why Not Both." Although to be honest I am more interested in the way this makes it possible to understand the present than debates in intellectual history. "via GIPHYTo quote The Double Shift again: "As I have argued, these two aspects are, in some sense, two different ways of looking at the same thing, the same social relation, grasped in terms of bodies and their coordination and minds and their automation. However, they also function in different ways of understanding the orientation of desire. In the first, it is imposed through necessity; as selling one's labor power becomes the only condition of survival, living is aligned with making a living through wage labor. Wage labor appears to be the only way to make a living because all other ways are effaced. The constraints of society appear less as particular institutions, regimes of accumulation, and social relations, but as the way things must be; their historicity and contingency are effaced in the present order. This structural condition is supplemented by an ideological dimension insisting that not only that one must one identify with their job, find their passion in their labor, but that such a condition is also to be actively desired. Having to work, to dedicate oneself entirely to work, is presented twice, as it were—once as a necessary condition for survival and the second time as aspiration integral to one's identity. To frame it according to the division of work and action, we could argue that work is defined as both production and action, both as the constraint of necessity tied to survival and something freely undertaken to identify and distinguish oneself. The particular double determination in capitalist society is one in which work vacillates between a necessary fact of life to an object of desire, from making a living to finding meaning. The often-asked question,  "What do you do for a living?" vacillates between these two senses; at once,, it indicates something of necessity, of one's economic situation, and freedom, one's supposedly chosen path in life. It is both what one has to do and who one is. Work as necessity and work as subjectivity, as body and as mind, do not just coexist as two different ways of grasping the same thing, but are subject to their own logic of alternation as material necessity and ideological meaning reinforce and also undermine each other." Double determination makes it possible to think at once of our particular "bondage," to use Spinoza's term, caught both in a set of material relations, namely capitalism, that reduce us to labor power, and intellectual traditions which express the same conditions through the ideological terms of morality, responsibility, and individuality. Transformation entails transforming each. There is a limited efficacy of criticism so long as it just remains criticism (of course the corollary is that there a limited efficacy of practice as practice). It is a matter of linking together the transformation of material conditions and intellectual concepts, or, what people used to call Praxis. Updated 6/16/24

Crowded and isolated Black and Latino neighborhoods are marked by economic deprivation and social depression. Many residents of these neighborhoods are disconnected from the larger society, no longer able to share in the values or social norms of majority America. The study of this concentrated poverty has become a new mini-industry. There has been a spate of books, reports, and articles on the phenomenon, which is variously known as "persistent poverty," the "underclass," or the "new poor." The authors of this book reject the label "underclass" because it is demeaning and "new poor" because it is inaccurate. We find it more profitable to focus on the problems of separation. Poverty has always afflicted America, and even long-term poverty has been an issue during other periods of the nation's development. Today, American society faces a period of growing social and economic separation, caused by worsened opportunities for the poor and resulting in more destructive long-term consequences for them and the society as a whole. We begin with the idea that global economic restructuring has since about 1975 altered the way political and social institutions work at every level in America. Until politics and economics are again reshaped, the problems of urban poverty will remain severe. Reshaping may begin as the pressures from urban separation force community-level institutions and politics to respond; in their response we believe these institutions should be strengthened, restructured, and redirected. Multi-local coalitions should be formed to press for re-allocation of federal resources in favor of domestic needs and for re-regulation of the national economy in favor of workers and common citizens. Only then can a successful attack begin on the problems of persistent poverty. To set the stage for directing the reader's attention to the conditions under which neighborhood organizations and municipal governments can mount a successful attack that will modify the structure and management of the national political economy, we have collected props from a wide-ranging survey. We begin by looking at such broad concerns as the behavior of the global economy, and we conclude with a focus on such narrow questions as the viability of particular municipal programs to alleviate poverty. In the middle sections, our survey shows in detail how persistent poverty in American cities is connected to various influential structures and processes: the global economy, the U.S. industrial structure, federal social policy, metropolitan labor markets, and finally, local politics and policy. We imagine a network of connections. At each of five nodes some of these processes are going through changes, being "restructured" or reorganized. Until quite recently it was assumed that basic needs--such as housing, education, health care, neighborhood safety, and jobs--could be made available to nearly all Americans. Programs to provide these necessities had been expanding for over 50 years, the guarantee becoming over time more accepted as a social responsibility; but suddenly this basic commitment to a social contract has been changed. American society now promises little and delivers less to people or communities who cannot provide for themselves. In the process of transformation, the world's richest nation is creating a third-world sub-society within its own borders. Policymakers have adopted three ways of thinking about these emerging problems. Some hold to the notion that poverty is increasing because a lax welfare state has generated a large group of "nonparticipants," "marginal people," bums. Probably a larger group of policymakers think the rising problems of the poor are caused simply by cutbacks in resources devoted to social equity. A third group sees poverty as an almost inevitable consequence of the vagaries of the market, made worse in recent years by globalization of the economy and lack of a national economic plan. Our argument is that the recent upsurge in persistent urban poverty has been generated by a particular set of American political responses to transformations in structure of the global and domestic economies, exacerbated considerably by a long process of highly subsidized suburbanization and by racism. The purpose of this book is to support this argument by reviewing and interpreting research on the global economy, industrial change, and public policy. In doing this we are able to estimate their combined effects on cities, neighborhoods, and residents. Since the late 1970s the global economy has become increasingly integrated, and American corporations have moved world-wide in search of cheaper ways to produce to meet stiff competition. As a result, American workers have felt a steady erosion of their power and a persistent reduction in their standard of living. There is a trickledown effect in reverse, a backwash that swamps American labor. Unskilled workers have been marginalized by widespread plant shut-downs and blue-collar lay-offs, and they have found a paucity of good career ladders, stuck instead in low-wage, dead-end, service jobs. At the same time, many poorly prepared immigrants have arrived; many women have come to head families, finding themselves unable to support households on their own;) and discrimination against minorities has continued. While some Americans have benefitted financially from the post 1970 changes, the poorest have been pushed down or cut adrift. The federal government, preoccupied with global-economy issues, and careful to be responsive to the growing demands of its new, upper-middle-class, suburban constituencies, has sacrificed the urban poor. State and local governments have also retrenched, adding to the crisis, by responding to demands for austerity from business, tax-paying voters and public officials alike. When the squeeze came from the global economy, public institutions were unprepared to relieve the inevitable difficulties the poor would encounter. Corporate redeployment and government economizing insured that city labor markets would turn sour, especially for basic jobs. Federal funds for cities and poor people were cut and guarantees for benefits and services were reduced. The tax revolt was managed by new politics that coalesced after 35 years of white, middle-class suburbanization the budget reductions hit hardest of all on public jobs and services in central cities. In the scramble to survive from shutdowns, contractions, layoffs, and budget cuts, everyone with any power tried to get out and get ahead, and those with less power got left farther and farther behind, increasingly separated from the main society. The majority of Black Americans and Latinos already were subjected to relatively low wages, bad housing, and poor schools. Most women supporting children by themselves already had great difficulties. New immigrants from Latin America and South East Asia were already near the bottom. In earlier years, economic growth and the development of a more liberal society had allowed some in such situations to escape the poverty of the ghetto and the bad barrios, and because many believed in this promise, some communities had an aura of hopefulness. But with the job losses and the program cuts replacing sound economic growth, and the new self-interest replacing community and collective interests, the situation worsened for those left behind; their expectations plummeted, and their communities became isolated. We find that cities and even neighborhoods have had to turn more and more to their own energies and resources. It is true that they are strapped tightly to small budgets, have made little dent so far on the most serious problems, and will ultimately have to depend on private sector job growth and re-established, well-funded, federal transfer programs. But local governments and community-based organizations are close to problems, and they have both the opportunity to become involved and the need to revitalize these poor communities. Their role in solving community problems has escalated over the last two decades, along with rising expectations for them to intervene. City halls and community organizations are therefore forced to innovate, press demands, and represent neighborhoods. From this pessimistic dilemma arises the main line of our optimism, our principle recommendation for policy. At the national level, action to reduce poverty is at a standstill, or worse. At the local level, resources are not available. But because problems are deep, apparent, and threatening to local authorities, local political movements have grown more successful; both community organizations and city halls have turned seriously to the task of dealing with poverty. As they well know, on their own they cannot succeed; but through cooperation, through state and national coalitions, and by means of other influences on national politics, these progressive local political movements can move toward success. New policies should be directed toward strengthening such possibilities. In Chapter One, after a cursory review of theories of poverty, we lay out our major thesis and preview the various arguments and findings of the book. In Chapter Two we document the appalling conditions of poor and minority people in central cities, explaining why persistent, concentrated, urban poverty ought to be seen in relation to the separations that result from inequalities in the entire distribution of income and wealth. In Chapter Three we analyze the connections between the structure and movement of the new global economy and the dilemmas of the poorest Americans. There we examine widely dispersed, globalized markets and production arrangements that are managed by the tightly centralized control systems of major corporations. In Chapter Four we extend the arguments and see how changing industrial patterns have worsened the structure of opportunities facing most American cities and workers. Simultaneous dispersal of jobs and centralization of management have removed good jobs from cities and left behind minorities and women, and their children. With limited social contact outside their embattled neighborhoods and with weakened social contracts tying them to the larger community, these people have settled into a persistent poverty that leaves few routes for escape. In Chapter Five we first see how economic changes have led to a new, conservative politics. We then examine policies of the federal government, local government, and community-based organizations, finding what is innovative about them and what constrains them. There we argue that only through local reconstruction and a new organization of politics, involving grass-roots and neighborhood groups in new ways, will pressure build up for the required transformation in national politics that will rechannel funds toward domestic needs. In the end, democratic participation and politics will have to take control of the economy, or else poverty will indeed persist. The sources for new change are to be found in coalitions formed from below. Finally, in Chapter Six we propose specific ways that new energy and attention can be refocused in improved policies at all levels of government. There is a tension throughout this study. We are faced with a conflict between two findings. On the one hand, powerful global economic forces play a major role in determining the life chances of American citizens. On the other hand, the situation of the poor can be radically improved through a staged process of local empowerment, the formation of new political coalitions, and the consequent reformulation of a national agenda. The reader may find, concerning the first view, that the arguments in Chapters Three and Four appear to be top-down and accepting of the force of structural arrangements like competitive markets, and too despairing of the potential good influence of human agency, through social movements, political action, and the like. The arguments in these chapters display our deep concern that global economic forces be better understood by the nation's policymakers, so that global contributions to severe poverty in American cities can be traced through to corporate behavior in a newly expanded, more competitive, and highly integrated world market. At the other extreme, the reader may find that the tasks we set in Chapters Five and Six for changed local governments and coalitions of local forces are too demanding; chances for challenging and improving federal policy may seem remote. We acknowledge this risk of asking the reader to examine both sides of the question, but do so because the problems of urban poverty in the United States today are immense, and their resolution will require complex solutions and far-reaching changes. This study began in 1989 for a report to the Rockefeller Foundation on the current state of research on persistent and severe urban poverty. The idea grew our of the authors' discussion with James Gibson and Erol Ricketts, who were concerned with the relationships among economic structure, local institutions, and persistent poverty. The Foundation's Equal Opportunity Division provided generous financial support. Our survey of research and analysis was done together with a team of graduate students at Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley; Lisa Bornstein, David Campt, and Elizabeth Mueller researched and drafted chapters; Robert Letcher, Sharon Lord, Susan Sullivan, and George Washington assisted. The work was done mainly under the auspices of the University of California's Institute of Urban and Regional Development. We thank Marie Floyd, David Van Arnam, and Demetra Dentes (at Cornell) for editing and typing; and Cathy Girardeau and Arleda Martinez, who efficiently helped with typing.

Crowded and isolated Black and Latino neighborhoods are marked by economic deprivation and social depression. Many residents of these neighborhoods are disconnected from the larger society, no longer able to share in the values or social norms of majority America. The study of this concentrated poverty has become a new mini-industry. There has been a spate of books, reports, and articls on the phenomenon, which is variously known as "persistent poverty,", the underclass," or the "new poor." The authors of this book reject the label "underclass" because it is demeaning and "new poor" because it is inaccurate. We find it more profitable to focus on the problem of separation. Poverty has always afflicted America, and even long-term poverty has been an issue during other periods of the nation's development. Today, American society faces a period of growing social and economic separation, caused by worsened opportunities for the poor and resulting in more destructive long-term consequences for them and the society as a whole. We begin with the idea that global economic restructuring has since about 1975 altered the way political and social institutions work at every level in America. Until politics and economics are again reshaped, the problems of urban poverty will remain severe. Reshaping may begin as the pressures from urban separation force community-level institutions should be strengthened, restructured, and redirected. Multi-local coalitions should be formed to press for re-allocation of federal resources in favor of domestic needs and for re-regulation of the national economy in favor of workers and common citizens. Only then can a successful attack begin on the problems of persistent poverty. To set the stage for directing the reader's attention to the conditions under which neighborhood organizations and municipal governments can mount a successful attack that will modify the structure and management of the national political economy, we have collected props from a wide-ranging survey. We begin by looking at such broad concerns as the behavior of the global economy, and we conclude with a focus on such narrow questions as the viability of particular municipal programs to alleviate poverty. In the middle sections, our survey shows in detail how persistent poverty in American cities is connected to various influential structures and processes: the global economy, the U.S. industrial structure, federal social policy metropolitan labor markets, and finally, local politics and policy. We imagine a network of connections. At each of five nodes some of these processes are going through changes, being "restructured" or reorganized. Until quite recently it was assumed that basic needs -- such as housing, education, health care, neighborhood safety, and jobs -- could be made available to nearly all Americans. Programs to provide these necessities had been expanding for over 50 years, the guarantee becoming over time more accepted as a social responsibility; but suddenly this basic commitment to a social contract has been changed. American society now promises little and delivers less to people or communities who cannot provide for themselves. In the process of transformation, the world's richest nation is creating a third-world sub-society within its own borders. Policymakers have adopted three ways of thinking about these emerging problems. Some hold to the notion that poverty is increasing because a lax welfare state has generated a large group of "non-participants," "marginal people," bums. Probably a larger group of policymakers think the rising problems of the poor are caused simply by cutbacks in resources devoted to social equity. A third group sees poverty as an almost inevitable consequence of the vagaries of the market, made worse in recent years by globalization of the economy and lack of a national economic plan. Our argument is that the recent upsurge in persistent urban poverty has been generated by a particular set of American political responses to transformations in structure of the global and domestic economies, exacerbated considerably by a long process of highly subsidized suburbanization and by racism. The purpose of this book is to support this argument by reviewing and interpreting research on the global economy, industrial change, and public policy. In doing this we are able to estimate their combined effects on cities, neighborhoods, and residents. Since the late 1970s the global economy has become increasingly integrated, and American corporations have moved world-wide in search of cheaper ways to produce to meet stiff competition. As a result, American workers have felt a steady erosion of their power and a persistent reduction in their standard of living. There is a trickle-down effect in reverse, a backwash that swamps American labor. Unskilled workers have been marginalized by widespread plant shut-downs and blue-collar lay-offs, and they have found a paucity of good career ladders, stuck instead in low-wage, dead-end, service jobs. At the same time, many poorly prepared immigrants have arrived; many women have come to head families, finding themselves unable to support households on their own;) and discrimination against minorities has continued. While some Americans have benefited financially from the post 1970 changes, the poorest have been pushed down or cut adrift. The federal government, preoccupied with global-economy issues, and careful to be responsive to the growing demands of its new, upper-middle-class, suburban constituencies, has sacrificed the urban poor. State and local governments have also retrenched, adding to the crisis, by responding to demands for austerity from business, tax-paying voters and public officials alike. When the squeeze came from the global economy, public institutions were unprepared to relieve the inevitable difficulties the poor would encounter. Corporate redeployment and government economizing insured that city labor markets would turn sour, especially for basic jobs. Federal funds for cities and poor people were cut and guarantees for benefits and services were reduced. The tax revolt was managed by new politics that coalesced after 35 years of white, middle-class suburbanization; the budget reductions hit hardest of all on public jobs and services in central cities. In the scramble to survive from shutdowns, contractions, layoffs, and budget cuts, everyone with any power tried to get out and get ahead, and those with less power got left farther and farther behind, increasingly separated from the main society. The majority of Black Americans and Latinos already were subjected to relatively low wages, bad housing, and poor schools. Most women supporting children by themselves already had great difficulties. New immigrants from Latin America and South East Asia were already near the bottom. In earlier years, economic growth and the development of a more liberal society had allowed some in such situations to escape the poverty of the ghetto and the bad barrios, and because many believed in this promise, some communities had an aura of hopefulness. But with the job losses and the program cuts replacing around economic growth, and the new self-interest replacing community and collective interests, the situation worsened for those left behind; their expectations plummeted, and their communities became isolated. We find that cities and even neighborhoods have had to turn more and more to their own energies and resources. It is true that they are strapped tightly to small budgets, have made little dent so far on the most serious problems, and will ultimately have to depend on private-sector job growth and re-established, well-funded, federal transfer programs. But local governments and community-based organizations are close to problems, and they have both the opportunity to become involved and the need to revitalize these poor communities. Their role in solving community problems has escalated over the last two decades, along with rising expectations for them to intervene. City halls and community organizations are therefore forced to innovate, press demands, and represent neighborhoods. From this pessimistic dilemma arises the main line of our optimism, our principle recommendation for policy. At the national level, action to reduce poverty is at a standstill, or worse. At the local level, resources are not available. But because problems are deep, apparent, and threatening to local authorities, local political movements have grown more successful; both community organizations and city halls have turned seriously to the task of dealing with poverty. As they well know, on their own they cannot succeed; but through cooperation, through state and national coalitions, and by means of other influences on national politics, these progressive local political movements can move toward success. New policies should be directed toward strengthening such possibilities. In Chapter One, after a cursory review of theories of poverty, we lay out our major thesis and preview the various arguments and findings of the book. In Chapter Two we document the appalling conditions of poor and minority people in central cities, explaining why persistent, concentrated, urban poverty ought to be seen in relation to the separations that result from inequalities in the entire distribution of income and wealth. In Chapter Three we analyze the connections between the structure and movement of the new global economy and the dilemma of the poorest Americans. There we examine widely dispersed, globalized markets and production arrangements that are managed by the tightly centralized control systems of major corporations. In Chapter Four we extend the arguments and see how changing industrial patterns have worsened the structure of opportunities facing most American cities and workers. Simultaneous dispersal of jobs and centralization of management have removed good jobs from cities and left behind minorities and women, and their children. With limited social contact outside their embattled neighborhoods and with weakened social contracts tying them to the larger community, these people have settled into a persistent poverty that leaves few routes for escape. In Chapter Five we first see how economic changes have led to a new, conservative politics. We then examine policies of the federal government, local government, and community-based organizations, finding what is innovative about them and what constrains them. There we argue that only through local reconstruction and a new organization of politics, involving grass-roots and neighborhood groups in new ways, will pressure build up for the required transformation in national politics that will rechannel funds toward domestic needs. In the end, democratic participation and politics will have to take control of the economy, or else poverty will indeed persist. The sources for new change are to be found in coalitions formed from below. Finally, in Chapter Six we propose specific ways that new energy and attention can be refocused in improved policies at all levels of government. There is a tension throughout this study. We are faced with a conflict between two findings. On the one hand, powerful global economic forces play a major role in determining the life chances of American citizens. On the other hand, the situation of the poor can be radically improved through a staged process of local empowerment, the formation of new political coalitions, and the consequent reformation of a national agenda. The reader may find, concerning the first view, that the arguments in Chapters Three and Four appear to be top-down and accepting of the force of structural arrangements like competitive markets, and too despairing of the potential good influence of human agency, through social movements, political action, and the like. The arguments in these chapters display our deep concern that global economic forces be better understood by the nation's policymakers, so that global contributions to severe poverty in American cities can be traced through to corporate behavior in a newly expanded, more competitive, and highly integrated world market. At the other extreme, the reader may find that the tasks we set in Chapters Five and Six for changed local governments and coalitions of local forces are too demanding; chances for challenging and improving federal policy may seem remote. We acknowledge this risk of asking the reader to examine both sides of the question, but do so because the problems of urban poverty in the United States today are immense, and their resolution will require complex solutions and far-reaching changes. This study began in 1989 for a report to the Rockefeller Foundation on the current state of research on persistent and severe urban poverty. The idea grew out of the authors' discussion with James Gibson and Erol Ricketta, who were concerned with the relationships among economic structure, local institutions, and persistent poverty. The Foundation's Equal Opportunity Division provided generous financial support. Our survey of research and analysis was done together with a team of graduate students at Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley; Lisa Bornstein, David Campt, and Elizabeth Mueller researched and drafted chapters; Robert Letcher, Sharon Lord, Susan Sullivan, and George Washington assisted. The work was done mainly under the auspices of the University of California's Institute of Urban and Regional Development. We thank Marie Floyd, David Van Arnam, and Demetra Dentes (et Cornell) for editing and typing; and Cathy Girardeau and Arieda Martinez, who efficiently helped with typing.

This work focuses on a subject that has been of constant interest and continuing centrality in the political agendas of different national legal systems: the procedural simplification that can be ascribable to the species of interventions that belong to the broader genus of the change of public administration'. Since the '70s, the transformation of public administration, among other different possibilities, chose the ambiguous and winding path of simplification. It has been taken as a guiding principle for the entire legal system and as a prevailing logic for the process of redesigning and restructuring the administrative organization and action. Administrative simplification was a 'fashionable' topic in the '90s, and since then a 'central block' and 'driving force' of both EU and national public policies, thus becoming a technical and cultural process for reforming administration. Its aim is 'to give it a more suitable shape that is tailored to the needs of society' for which its services are indeed intended. The procedural simplification is a topic of overnational interest that in several jurisdictions has been gradually occupying larger and larger spaces in the definition of public policies, according to the shared view that the simplification of the regulatory and administrative system is a fundamental condition for of socio-economic growth. Thanks to the awareness of the notion of 'administrative risk', or rather, the sensitive 'mutual dependence' between political-administrative and economic system, as Borruso noted in the preface to the European Commission Communication Europe 2020. A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, the administrative simplification measures and, in particular, administrative procedures, have been dominating for a long time the political, legal, economic and social debates. Moreover, they are intended to occupy significant spaces in the near future, inasmuch as they are directed to keep within a threshold of 'tolerance' the inevitable organizational and functional complexity of an administration built on the principles of institutional pluralism, subsidiarity, competence and specialization, indispensability journalistic intervention, not to say of binding formalism. By establishing itself as a legal and social requirement to guarantee an administrative action that would be 'simpler, more effective, more efficient and more economical' for citizens, and by changing its status from mere collective aspiration to legal claim, the simplification of administrative procedures is an multi-faceted and poly-dimensional objective that the national legislature has pursued through different strategic actions, among which, the computerization process has been taking a central role. Not surprisingly, the development of digital administration has been considered by many as the most effective tool to simplify administrative action and respond to the issue of procedural complication. It has been sees as a process of 'review of the administrative structures and their organizational links, [.] redefinition of tasks and optimization of the capacity for work in the offices, thus achieving a reduction of the steps and the time required for the performance of administrative acting, which is what the simplification of procedures consists of. A theme which, in the first instance, concerns the balance between interests and principles. Inevitable corollary to administrative impartiality, organizational structure and the distribution of skills, the procedural complexity, which is questioned for the number of its steps and intra-procedures activities, for the time taken to achieve them and the red tape that affects citizens, it is a challenge to be answered, in general, through the use of computerization and communication tools. It is a challenge to be carried out with the accurate use of computerization and communication technologies. First of all, as its digitization is able to give an adequate response to the need to combine functional demands and requirements of simplification and rebalance the relationship between the end-protection guarantee of the interest and the duty of non-compression 'effectiveness, efficiency and economy of action that is traditionally made explicit while making the decision. From this remark, the added value that the process of computerization has shown in the policies of simplification can be understood precisely by evaluating in a negative way, how, the simplification of the administrative proceedings 'cannot be prosecuted by dequotando (non so cosa vuol dire) and debunking the rules of procedure whose positivization has represented a civilized procedural achievement. The extra value of the process of computerization among the techniques of procedural simplification – we have already said – is 'integration' between the principles of effectiveness, efficiency and economy, of certainty of timing, transparency of administrative action; the ability to overcome the limits that are connected to this principle and process of public administration reform, summarized in the principle of 'contradictory', participation, impartiality, and the necessary complete investigation; in the introduction of better modes of interaction, enabling faster and more effective relationships with participants and a greater guarantee of legal claims. In short, it consists of the ability to re-balance, at the procedural level, the relationship between the needs of the function and the requirements of guarantee of the action, often 'unbalanced ' in favor of one or the other. The 'revolutionary' aspect that we identify in the electronic administrative procedure is actually the result of a process that first passes through the definition of new information systems. The object of technological revolution is indeed information. The revolutionary aspect of computerization administration is the dynamic management of information and the possible reality of interconnected information systems that are integrated and shared, which does not mean less safe. And the verbal synthesis of a technological simplified action is the digital administrative proceedings . The digital simplification of the administrative procedure is the product of different methods of collection, use, access, transmission and communication of information, all technology-based. And administrative digital procedure is nothing but a decision-making process that takes advantage of the tools that technology puts at governments and citizens disposal. 'Neutral' tools that the legislature adopts for political purposes aiming at simplification and exercise of the rights. Tools that, precisely because they are neutral, will act in terms of reducing procedural complexity according to the quantum assumed while legislative determining, on the one hand, and enforcement by public authorities on the other. From this perspective we must look at the tools that legislators, Italian as well as Spanish, have outlined in order to give the electronically processed work the same effectiveness as the one carried out traditionally and in order to fulfill the obligation of information management procedures: from the discipline of electronic documents and the electronic signature, to the discipline of registering incoming and outgoing communications through an automated system; from the rules of the communications of documents between public administrations through the use of electronic mail to the rules for the direct acquisition of data and documents in the digital archives of public administrations; and again, to the provisions of a computer file, taken in the path as the 'centerpiece of the new mode of conducting administrative proceedings'. From this remark, the same computer file, created by national legislature as 'informative base' needed for a contextual work and shared between different subjects, 'fulfilled' with the expectations of simplification of the action and relationships, of the 'right to be known' of action both on the domestic side as on the external side, suggests, of course, a 'new' management process, but it remains only in the domain of attempt to reform if not accompanied by concrete implementation by individual administrations. It is their duty to start the processes of re-organization in order to manage the 'new' procedure based on shared information and transparent activities; on direct and immediate relationships; on a different value of time and space; on a simpler, more effective, efficient and economical, and at the same time, more able to guarantee rights and interests. The practical and proper application of these tools remains responsibility of each administration, asked to face the real challenge of procedural innovation. The following research is based on this fundamental interpretation and its methodological approach is developed, at first, starting from the acknowledgement of the legal category of the administrative procedure, the reconstruction of the lines of development and legal aspects that make of this administrative point as both action and organization, the place and the best opportunity to study the topic. Secondly, the working hypothesis is outlined. Starting from the construction of the simplification of the administrative procedure as recognition of a 'right' balance between complexity and simplicity of the action, the work continues by electing computerization as a 'form' of simplification that is able to envisage a possible solution for the problem of quality decision-making, resulting from the balance between the quantum and guarantees of effectiveness and efficiency of the action. In a third passage, we deal with the administrative digital proceedings, with particular attention to the developments which, from different management information mechanisms can derived in terms of modes of action that can develop horizontally, network-like or shared among stakeholders of the exercise of power. Finally, on the same lines, the work is enriched by the experience of the Spanish structure, in order to strengthen the thoughts on digital simplification of the procedure from a comparative perspective, which is always essential for the development of the research. From this point of view, the analysis of different time frequency of the stages of computerization in the two systems is an important key. The comparative analysis, despite showing an initial protagonism of the Italian legislator who, with the adoption of Digital Administration Code, anticipated a correct vision of modernization and initiated the 'transformation' of digital government, displays, in a second stage, a slowdown in the process, whereas it has a reverse path in the Spanish system, which, after assimilating the Italian model, proved able to proceed to the state of implementation with a more sustained dynamism and in shorter time. In the Spanish system what played an important role was the 'codification' of the awareness of the need for a transition phase, in which the digital system coexisted side by side with the paper-based system rather than automatically superseding it. This phase based on flexibitly proved to be effective for the change in the administrative system. First as a system of relations of public and private entities. Precisely this relational paradigm, in the analysis that is proposed here, has been the core of the thesis. This paradigm is both a thread of the investigation and the space where all the different approaches and issues related to procedural matters converge. The democratic nature of the administrative action, the implementation of the principles of impartiality and the participation in the Administrative Procedure Law, the introduction and the vindication of private sector criteria of efficiency, effectiveness and economy of the public actions are the background to the conclusion that the procedural simplification is primarily 'simplification of the interaction'. All these elements also frame the structural and functional reorganization that the digitization process requires, and, at the same time, develops, in an eminently relational perspective; of a 'new' way of building and developing inner relationships within the administration, between different administrations and between them and the citizens.

Are you looking for the perfect foreign policy book to start the New Year right? We spent the last few weeks asking our favorite thinkers what new titles they loved this year. Here are the seven books that stood out in 2023.Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy

By Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman"Underground Empire" tells the story of how America used the unipolar moment to create a vice grip on the international economy, making it impossible for most countries to do business with each other (or even exchange messages) without using U.S. payment systems or IT infrastructure. The world order, once defined by multiple dueling blocs, thus became synonymous with U.S. power.But empire isn't free. As Farrell and Newman note, Washington's constant use of sanctions and spying tools risks alienating other states and potentially bringing down the international system as we know it. Their book is a frightening reminder of the potential costs of overreach and a must-read for anyone interested in grand strategy and the future of global commerce. Ambitious readers may want to pair it with Chris Miller's "Chip War," a 2022 bestseller about America's quest to remain the kingpin of the world microchip industry.Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East

By Steven SimonWhen observing the parlous state of the Middle East today, it's hard to avoid a fundamental question: How could well-meaning American policymakers have gotten the region so wrong? In "Grand Delusion," Simon argues that most of our missteps boil down to a mismatch between pie-in-the-sky ends and limited means, made worse by a conviction that "facts don't matter, only intentions." The biting and well-researched book is made all the more powerful by Simon's long background of government service, including top-level roles in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, where he argued in favor of many policies that he now badly regrets.Simon brings a palpable sense of anger at four decades of American overreach in the Middle East, dedicating a chapter to each of the last eight presidents, all of whom found their own unique ways to leave the region worse than it was when they took office. His book is a must-read for those who want to understand where U.S. policy went wrong — and how to do things better next time. (Simon, we should note, is a senior research analyst at the Quincy Institute, which publishes RS.)The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism

By Keyu JinThese days, most English-language books about China begin from a place of deep skepticism. Government statistics are taken as carefully crafted fictions, official statements as likely lies. What else would one expect as a new cold war dawns?"The New China Playbook" is different. Written by a London-based economist whose father is a prominent Chinese Communist Party official, the book offers a rigorous yet sympathetic view of Beijing's rise. Jin's work provides crucial insights into the complex and sometimes surprising balance that the Chinese economy has struck between different systems. By demystifying China's economy, she urges us to consider a future of cooperation instead of conflict.Some have argued that Jin glosses over the darker aspects of Beijing's government policies. Readers can decide for themselves. But one thing is certain: Her book offers a thoughtful point of view on China that you won't find anywhere else.Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II

By Paul KennedyCould any list of foreign policy must-reads be complete without a book about WWII? We certainly didn't think so. Enter "Victory at Sea," a wide-ranging yet page-turning look at the naval activities that defined last century's greatest war from an eminent military historian. Kennedy's book, which features new paintings from marine artist Ian Marshall, narrates the fall of old great powers and the rise of new ones, first and foremost led by the United States.Readers with a limited background in naval history shouldn't fear this book, which is less about the details of each individual battle than the broader trends in geopolitics playing out at the time. Some reviewers have noted minor factual errors emanating from some less-than-ideal sourcing, but all in all, "Victory at Sea" is a helpful and provocative overview of a vital moment in military history. (This one was technically published in 2022, but the paperback edition doesn't come out until next year, so we'll call it even.)A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy

By Nathan ThrallThe book starts with a living nightmare: A truck slams into a Jerusalem school bus carrying kindergartners, leaving one teacher and six children dead. Many survivors left the resulting fire with life-changing burns."A Day in the Life of Abed Salama" tells the story of the father of one of those children. Thrall narrates Salama's desperate efforts to find his son, an emotional struggle made all the more difficult by the fact that the life-long resident of Jerusalem could not legally enter Jewish-controlled parts of the city.The book expands on a 2021 essay in the New York Review of Books in which Thrall interlaces stories about the accident with a crash course in Jerusalem's history. The extra space allows Thrall to dive deeper into Salama's life, in which everything from his marriage to his child's education is shaped by the brutal realities of life under occupation. As war rages in Gaza, this book offers a moving testimony of the more mundane forms of violence that define life between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.Getting Russia Right

By Thomas GrahamSome books argue that the U.S. and Russia are natural enemies, doomed to fight until one side wins. Others blame one country or the other for a laundry list of sins that made cooperation impossible after the heady days of the 1990s. "Getting Russia Right," to its great credit, does neither.Graham combines a realist sensibility with the hard pragmatism of a long-time policymaker, drawing on a wealth of experience as in both government and academia. In his view, structural factors — chief among them the difference in how each side views Russia's rightful place in the world — combined with a series of impertinent decisions by both sides to leave bilateral relations in their current sorry state.By insisting on the agency of both Washington and Moscow, "Getting Russia Right" argues that better-informed decisions could actually lead to better outcomes. And Graham, in his typical style, lays out a clear and specific set of recommendations to encourage such a shift. His relatively short book is required reading for those who feel like one Cold War was more than enough.Beyond the Water's Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy

By Paul PillarThere's an old truism that, while American politicians play partisan games over domestic problems, such petty squabbles give way to unity "at the water's edge." Pillar's book destroys this fiction, illuminating how party interests have all too often taken precedence over sober-minded analysis by patriotic bureaucrats. This phenomenon, in his telling, leads to unnecessarily long wars and corrodes our own democracy at home.While "Beyond the Water's Edge" largely focuses on the past three decades, Pillar sometimes reaches further back into U.S. history to demonstrate the ways in which officials have overcome this tendency. But Pillar, who is a former intelligence official and current non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, is far from pollyannaish: The book recommends myriad policies to reduce the influence of partisanship on foreign policy but deems their implementation highly unlikely. Little wonder that Francis Fukuyama described the slim treatise as an "ominous warning."

Capitalism has imposed a dynamic of multiple forms of violence in the Global South, particularly since the last decades of the 20th century, with the onset of neoliberalism and as the Washington Consensus settled. This package of measures promoted mainly by the Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, was a turning point in economic policies and led the way to the consolidation of the current context of neoliberal globalisation. This article takes this macroeconomic panorama as a starting point to analyse the current violence that keeps the Latin American peoples subordinated in what Johan Galtung identifies as "the conjunction between the cultural violence of the mainstream economic theory and the structural violence of the mainstream economic practice" (2003, p. 211). Among these many forms of violence, perpetrated from an extractivist, Eurocentric, colonial and patriarchal point of view, this analysis will focus on the ones generated when accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005) practices are involved and how these transform indigenous territories in Latin America. It is in this context where the transnational corporations' practices of accumulation by dispossession, reflected in megaprojects, and the indigenous world-views clash. Adopting Rocío Silva's concept, these are "ecoterritorial" conflicts: conflicts that arise from the use and management of territories, understanding territory as a holistic concept that covers the social, cultural, economic and spiritual relations that compose them (2017). In this sense, we aim to extract from the opposition of these two antagonistic world visions: on the one hand, the modernity paradigm, with an extractivist modus operandi based on the neoliberal discourse; and, on the other hand, the indigenous world-views, which fight on a daily basis to build different realities and forms of organisation. This approach takes into account perspectives like ecofeminism, which will shed light on the interdependence between territories and bodies as vulnerable spaces, and Jason W. Moore's world-ecology paradigm, which will allow reading megaprojects as yet another product of capitalism that systematically exploits human beings and nature at the service of accumulation. The historical debate on the concept of development also adheres itself to this clash of world views. The objective is to present alternatives to the current mainstream model of development, which is based on a Western approach and works as a new form of colonialism. In opposition to "the ghost of development" (Quijano, 2000), alternative notions to the conventional discourse pose different realities to build, like the Buen Vivir and Vivir Bien proposals. These epistemologies of the South assert that developmentalism has reached its limits and alert of the devastating consequences of driving indigenous territories into the market economy as exploited subjects: exactly what megaprojects usually intend to do in these lands. Against this background, ecoterritorial conflicts have become one of the main challenges for Latin America in the 21st century and, in them, it is possible to see the asymmetry between the actors engaged in struggle. This asymmetry is reflected, on the one hand, on transnational corporations' impunity and, on the other, in the criminalisation of the indigenous peoples' resistance. As Boaventura de Sousa Santos says, in the current neoliberal system, "the only option that doesn't exist is a way out of this market" (2014, p. 17). In front of what looks like a non-option, this article will approach those resistances woven from the social movements, from below, and it will do so by taking as an example the case of the Mayan Train: the flagship megaproject of the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for the southeast of the country. The aim is to highlight the promised false development that supposedly comes with this project within the framework of the so-called Fourth Transformation, which, in spite of the aura of its socially beneficial character, is perpetuating the neoliberal approach of former Mexican governments. The ecoterritorial conflict generated by the Mayan Train, which has aroused opposition from social and indigenous movements, will reflect the above-mentioned clash of visions and will demonstrate the advance of extractivist borders. This is due to, among other aspects, the violation of human rights like the right to consultation of the ILO Convention 169, which has constitutional status in Mexico. Opacity has characterised the Mayan Train's project from the beginning and it has sown the seeds of uncertainty before the indigenous communities. Mexico is obliged to consult them in accordance with international standards, although conditions have clearly have not brought this about. Lastly, the text will try to expand the focus to see the Mayan Train together with other larger projects. From this viewpoint, this train would only be a part of the ambitious plan of the Mexican Government for the territorial reorganisation of the southeast of the country, which has not been industrialised like other areas of Mexico. This perspective will be implemented with the help of critical cartographies, which will interrelate the Mayan Train with projects like the Trans-Isthmian corridor, the Sembrando Vida programme, or the Special Economic Zones, among others. These megaprojects, which in addition to the profits that are generated for transnational corporations who are awarded them, and to the dispossession processes that communities will suffer, are going to define human mobility in the South border of Mexico as a buffer in-between for migrations directed to the United States. What is more, they will show Mexico as a laboratory country of the international trade agreements ratified by the Government of Mexico that have enabled the expansion of megaprojects in the country. Indeed, transnational corporations have found Mexico to be a paradise for expansion since 1980, when the State's role in economic activity started to diminish -especially since the beginning of the millennium when the presence of transnational companies started to increase-. An increase that reflects the need of capitalism for the relentless appropriation of borders "in order for the wheel of accumulation to keep spinning" (Molinero and Avallone, 2016, p. 33). ; Al amparo de la globalización neoliberal, actualmente los procesos de despojo transforman de manera recurrente territorios indígenas en América Latina. En este artículo, se propone analizar la oposición que se da entre estas prácticas de acumulación por desposesión de las empresas transnacionales (ETN) y las cosmovisiones de los pueblos originarios a través del análisis de los conflictos ecoterritoriales. Tomando el concepto de Rocío Silva Santisteban, se trata de conflictos que nacen de la pugna por el uso y gestión del territorio, entendiendo territorio como concepto holístico, donde interaccionan múltiples violencias. El objetivo de este artículo será desgranar el choque entre estas dos visiones antagónicas del mundo de la mano de perspectivas como la ecología-mundo de Jason W. Moore, que permitirá leer los megaproyectos como un producto más del capitalismo que explota sistémicamente seres humanos y naturaleza al servicio de la acumulación, o el ecofeminismo, que aportará luz a la interdependencia entre territorios y cuerpos como espacios vulnerables. Asimismo, se tomará como ejemplo el caso del Tren Maya, el megaproyecto estrella del actual presidente de México, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, para evidenciar el falso desarrollo que promete la obra ferroviaria para el sureste del país en el marco de la llamada Cuarta Transformación. A través de este conflicto ecoterritorial, que ha despertado la oposición de movimientos sociales e indígenas, se plasmará este choque de visiones y se corroborará el avance de las fronteras extractivas gracias, entre otros aspectos, a la vulneración de derechos humanos como el derecho a consulta del Convenio 169 de la OIT. Por último, el artículo invitará a mirar el Tren Maya desde una mirada de las cartografías críticas, que lo interrelacionarán con proyectos mayores y que revelarán México como un país laboratorio de los tratados de comercio internacional que han propiciado la expansión de megaproyectos en el país.

Kanadas geographischer Norden liegt in dem Territorium Nunavut. Von hier aus ist es ebenso weit zum geographischen Nordpol wie zur US-kanadischen Grenze. Nunavut nimmt etwa 1/5 der kanadischen Landmasse ein, hat mit circa 38.000 Einwohnern jedoch bei weitem die kleinste Bevoelkerungsdichte des Landes. 85% der Einwohner sind Inuit deren Kultur sich in den vergangenen 70 Jahren radikal geaendert hat. Daher hat das Territorium heute mit mehreren Generationen von Inuit zu kaempfen die entweder traumatisiert sind oder zumindest schwer von den kulturellen und wirtschaftlichen Veraenderungen seit Ende des zweiten Weltkrieges gepraegt sind. Zur damaligen Zeit startete die Gruendung von festen Siedlungen in Nunavut und die Landflucht aus den temporaeren traditionellen Doerfern in die neuen Gemeinden. Egal ob wir von Senioren, Erwachsenen im mittleren Alter oder Jugendlichen sprechen, jede Generation hat eine Vielzahl von Veraenderungen erfahren, und erfaehrt sie immer noch. Diese beinhalten die Infragestellung persoenlicher und kultureller Identitaet, finanzielle Sicherheit, Wohnformen, Nahrungsmangel, Alkohol- und Drogenmisbrauch, Bildungssytem und der Wandel sozialer Werte wie inter-generationeller Wandel, Aufkommen neuer Geschlechterrollen, oder die Einfuehrung eines fremden politischen Systems und einer neuen Rechtsprechung. Andererseits werden heute auch weiterhin innerhalb von Inuitfamilien viele der traditionellen sozialen Werte praktiziert. Neben der Tragoedie, die mehrere aufeinanderfolgende Inuitgenerationen erleben mussten, bemueht sich die Gesellschaft das starke indigene Selbstbewusstsein wiederzubeleben, das sowohl dem Individuum als auch der Gesellschaft erlaubt ihre Kultur zu bewahren. Insbesondere Landrechtsorganisationen der Inuit oder indigene Nichtregierungsorganisationen treten fuer den Kulturerhalt ein, indem sie fuer mehr Anerkennung von und Stolz auf historische und rezente Errungenschaften der eigenen Kultur kaempfen. Die sozialen Probleme sowie die inner- und intra-kulturellen Prozesse die ich in meiner Arbeit beschreibe treffen nicht nur ausschliesslich auf Nunavut oder Inuitkultur zu. Stattdessen zeigen Studien aus anderen Regionen Kanadas und der Welt (LaPrairie 1987; Jensen 1986; Nunatsiaq News 6/30/2010) strukturell viele Aehnlichkeiten zur Situation in Nunavut auf. Obowhl durch den ueberregionalen Vergleich viele strukturelle Gemeinsamkeiten erkannt werden koennen, z.B. Marginalisierung der lokalen indigenen Bevoelkerung, Kolonialismus, Paternalisms und daraus entstehende Probleme wie persoenlicher und kultureller Identitaetsverlust, ist es ebenso wichtig einen tiefgruendigeren Blick auf die jeweiligen Besonderheiten der einzelnen regionalen Fallbeispiele zu werfen. Meiner Meinung nach, kann eine nachhaltige Verbesserung der Situation einer Gruppe, eines Dorfes oder Region nur dann erfolgen, wenn man kulturelle Besonderheiten in der Sozialisation, Kommunikation und Philisophie beruecksichtigt. Daher wird sich meine Dissertation ausschliesslich auf Nunavut und einige ausgewaehlte Fallbeispiele aus der Region konzentrieren. Die Fallbeispiele sollen lokale Unterschiede in der historischen Entwicklung und Gegenwartssituation illustrieren was zu einem besseren Verstaendnis der aktuellen Lage in den jeweiligen Doerfern sowie Nunavut als uebergordnete Einheit beitragen kann. Die Arbeit untersucht sowohl historische als auch rezente Ursachen die zu den vielen Problemen Nunavuts beitragen. Meine zeitgeschichtliche Einteilung in "Fruehkontaktphase", "Kontaktphase", "1. Generation" und "2. Generation" lehnt sich an Damas (2002: 7, 17) Terminologie von "Fruehkontaktphase", "Kontkat-Traditionsphase" und "Umsiedlungsphase" an. Er beschreibt damit drei Zeitperioden die sich deutlich in Bezug auf den Einfluss von Nicht-Inuit auf Inuit abheben. Kapitel zwei soll dabei die Kernaspekte der gegenwaertigen Sozialproblematik beschreiben. Diesbezueglich schaue ich auf die 4 Hauptfaktoren die meiner Meinung nach die Gesellschaft in Nunavut praegen: 1) Gewalt und andere soziale Probleme, 2) Die entsprechenden Organisationen und Programme die auf diese Probleme reagieren, 3) Bildung, 4) Inuitkulturspezifische Besonderheiten bezueglich Kommunikation und Sozialisation Diese vier Bereiche bilden die Grundlage fuer meine weiter Arbeit. Die darauffolgenden Kapitel fuehren den Leser durch den Wandlungsprozess einer vorkolonialen, halbnomadischen Gesellschaft zu einer sesshaften Gemeinschaft die sehr stark von einer Euro-kanadischen Lebensweise beeinflusst ist. Die einzelnen Kapitel behandeln jeweils eine neue Phase des kulturellen Wandels den ich in "Vor-Siedlungsphase, Erste, Zweite und Dritte Generation" unterteilt habe. Dabei untersuche ich die Formen und Relevanz von Gewalt und sozialer Probleme fuer die jeweilige Phase, wie sie mit der gesamtgeschichtlichen Entwicklung der Region zusammenhaengen, und wie die jeweiligen Generationen mit den Veraenderungen und Problemen umgegangen sind. . ; Canada's geographic centre lies in the Territory Nunavut. From here the distance to the geographic North Pole is as far as to the US border. Nunavut takes up about 1/5 of the Canadian land mass but has by far the smallest population with currently about 38,000 residents. 85% of its population are Inuit whose culture dramatically changed within the last 70 years. As a result, the territory is dealing with several generations of Inuit that are traumatized or at least severely affected by cultural and economic changes that started after World War 2 with the resettlement from the land into permanent communities. No matter if we are talking about the actual elders, mid-age adults or pre-teenagers, each of this generation experienced and still experiences various personal and cultural challenges of identity, financial and housing insecurity, food insecurity, substance abuse education, change of social values ranging from inter-generational and gender relationships to the introduction of a foreign political and legal system. On the other side, a lot of the traditional societal values are still being practiced in Inuit families. Despite all the tragedies that several generations of Inuit have experienced by now, the society keeps generating the strength and cultural pride that allows many Inuit both, as individuals and as a collective under the umbrella of either Inuit Land Claims or not for profit organizations to advocate on behalf of Inuit culture, to fight for more acknowledgement of Inuit culture and to enhance pride in the historic and present day cultural achievements of Nunavut's indigenous population. The social issues, inter- and intra-cultural processes described in my thesis are not exclusive to the situation in Nunavut or to Inuit. Studies from other regions, in Canada or from around the world (LaPrairie 1987; Jensen 1986; Nunatsiaq News 6/30/2010) reveal similar challenges. Though many structural similarities can be identified by comparing these studies with each other, e.g. marginalization of the indigenous local population, colonization, paternalism and resulting issues like personal and cultural identity loss, it is important to have a more in depth look into the single cases to determine which individual events and developments causes and maybe still cause such a devastating social situation as it is found among many indigenous peoples across the world. From my perspective effective improvements of the situation of a group, a respective community or region can only happen when particularities of socialization, communication and philosophy in the single cultural entities are being considered. That is why my thesis will exclusively focus on developments in Nunavut and use various case studies of communities. The case studies shall help to identify local differences in historic and recent developments and thus provide starting points for explanations of different developments in different Nunavut communities. The thesis is looking at both, historic and recent root causes for the many issues in Nunavut. The data that my my thesis is based on are a combination of literature and about 60 formal and informal interviews that I conducted in three Nunavut communities (Iqaluit, Whale Cove, Kugluktuk) during my 18 months of field work between October 2008 and March 2010. Many more spontaneous unstructured conversations between me and community members added to the pool of first-hand information that I gathered. Since my field work is limited to those three communities it has a very strong qualitative character. The quantitative side, which allows me to confidently apply my research analyses to entire Nunavut, comes from literature research as well as many informal conversations and a few formal interviews that I conducted with people who had some experience in other communities than Iqaluit, Kugluktuk and Whale Cove. Furthermore, while I was living at the old residence of the Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, I spend time with college students from across Nunavut. Through them, I obtained "case studies "from following communities: Iqaluit, Qikiqtarjuaq, Kimmirut, Pangnirtung, Clyde River, Pond Inlet, Igloolik, Repulse Bay, Cape Dorset, Chesterfield Inlet, Baker Lake, Rankin Inlet, Whale Cove, Arviat, Taloyoak, Kugluktuk. My general categorization of "early contact period", "contact", "1st generation" and "2nd generation" is very similar to Damas' terms of "early contact phase", "contact – traditional", "resettlement" that he uses to create a timeline that describes the major phases of impact for Inuit society (Damas 2002: 7, 17). Chapters 2 is meant to provide an inventory of the key aspects of current social issues in Nunavut. In this context I am looking at the four major aspects that in my opinion shape Nunavut's society: 1) violence and other forms of social dysfunctions 2) the associated services and delivering agencies that try to address those matters 3) Education 4) Inuit cultural particularities in communication and socialization Those four areas are forming the foundation for the rest of my work. The following chapters will guide the reader through the historic transformation process of Inuit pre-colonial semi-nomadic society to a society that is living in permanent settlements, strongly influenced if not in many ways dominated by Euro-Canadian culture. Each of those chapters will be referring to the social and cultural changes that happened in the different time periods that I labeled with "Pre-settlement, First, Second, and Third Generation". The relevance of violence and other social dysfunctions, their context and strategies how each generation dealt with those matters will be analyzed while I will be also referring to the impacts that non-Inuit, primarily Euro-Canadians and Euro-Americans had and have on Inuit society. .

This report presents the case study of Cyprus for the IEE project "Monitoring of energy efficiency in EU 27, Norway and Croatia (Odyssee-Mure)". Firstly it provides the economic and energy background to energy efficiency and then presents an assessment of energy efficiency trends in Cyprus in the period 1995-2010. Finally the energy efficiency measures and policies are presented and evaluated. The report is based on indicators produced from the Odyssee database and the measures extracted from the Mure database both available on line. Cyprus economy has grown by 32% in the period 2000-2010, an annual increase of 2.9% in the GDP. Value added increased in all sectors except agriculture. The most important sector which is services has increased by 40% and this explains the overall economic growth. The value added of industry increased by 12.5% over the same period, and the private consumption of households increased by 38.4%. The fiscal deficit initially deteriorated from 2.3% of GDP in year 2000 to 4.1% of GDP in 2004, became a surplus in years 2007 and 2008, and then deteriorated again strongly and reached 5.3% of GDP in 2010. Cyprus has adopted the euro in 1/1/2008. The euro zone has further stimulated economic growth. The economy is mainly services driven depending heavily on tourism but also on banking services and companies operating in Cyprus using the beneficial tax and credit system. The accession of Cyprus to the EU had a negative impact on agriculture, due to the cheaper agricultural imports from other EU countries and because of the long term water shortage which the Government has not resolved yet (desalination plants are currently expanded for this purpose) but also due to the common agricultural EU policy. The expansion of the value added of industry after 2001 is attributed to the construction of buildings (foreign demand). Private consumption has increased by 38.4% which is explained by low unemployment and increase in the disposable income of households. The conclusion is that Cyprus is a services-dominated economy with good macroeconomic indicators which has managed to enter the euro zone by implementing strict policies in public finance. The Cyprus energy system is small and isolated with no interconnections and no natural gas yet. Since 1995, primary energy consumption has increased by 40% - from 1970 ktoe in 1995 to 2769 ktoe in 2010. During the same period final energy consumption has increased by 35% - from 1409 ktoe to 1909 ktoe in 2010. Oil remains the dominant energy source of final consumers (72%). The shares in the energy balance of 2010 are: transport 56% (15% aviation), 17% households, 12% tertiary, 13% industry, 2% agriculture. During the period 1995-2010 primary energy intensity has decreased by 0.9%/year. In the same period final energy intensity has also decreased by 0.9%/year. The ratio of final to primary energy intensity has decreased slightly from 72% in 1995 to 71% in 2010. This essentially stable ratio is due to the transformation sector which has a low efficiency of 32%. Renewable energy sources (RES) have started to develop due to the relevant EU directive, and now comprises about 5% of final consumption. The decrease of the energy intensities suggest that improvement in energy efficiency has taken place although structural changes have also played a major role. During the period 2000-2010 the total energy efficiency index (Odex) has improved by 13% compared with 12% of the EU 27. The reasons for the improvement is the energy efficiency improvement of the industrial sector (mainly from the installations subject to the EU Emissions Trading system – ETS) and also the contribution from the transport sector (56% of final energy consumption) which has improved its efficiency thanks to new clean and fuel efficient vehicles. The efficiency index of the industrial sector has improved by 29% in the period 2000- 2010. The improvement is attributed to the non metallic mineral branch, which is subject to ETS, but also to some other branches which implement energy saving measures. The ETS sector consumes around 70% of industrial energy consumption. The other energy consuming branch is the food/beverage sector. Between 2000 and 2010 the household sector shows improvement 23% in the global Odex and 11% in the technical Odex. Even though the quality of data in this sector is not very good we can justify the improvement after the year 2004 when Cyprus entered the EU and the measures implemented have started to create energy savings. Prior to accession no significant policies existed. The very important EU directive for the energy performance of buildings has not been implemented fully yet and therefore the large savings potential is still unexploited. The transport sector shows an improvement of 9% in the Odex in the period 2000- 2010. Since in this period passenger traffic using public transport has decreased drastically, the improvement should mainly be attributed to the penetration of new clean and fuel efficient vehicles. Until 2004 diesel fuel prices for transport were subsidised. Therefore the large engine capacity private vehicles were replaced gradually when prices were liberalised. Another factor affecting the efficiency of this sector is energy consumption of aviation (15% of total national final consumption). From the jet fuel consumption per passenger a decrease of 17% has taken place in the same time period. In Cyprus public transport is not well developed. There is no rail infrastructure or water transport. However in 2009 a new Law was enacted for the regulation and development of public transport. The entire bus fleet will be gradually replaced and increased with new and environmentally friendly vehicles together with other infrastructure. Total CO2 emissions from fuel combustion in Cyprus have increased from 4.77 Mt CO2 in 1995 to 8.4 Mt CO2 in 2010. The increase is mainly caused by the low energy efficiency of the electricity generation which is 32% in the time period and is oil based since there is no natural gas. Natural gas will not reach Cyprus before 2015. The total direct CO2 emissions from all final energy consuming sectors have increased by 18% between 1995 and 2010, from 3.6 Mt CO2 in 1995 to 4.2 MtCO2 in 2010, while they had peaked in year 2007 to 4.7 Mt CO2 and then declined as a result of the economic downturn of years 2008-2010. Cyprus has significant potential for energy savings in buildings and then in transport. Since the accession in 2004 all European policies in energy efficiency have been transposed and started to be implemented gradually. It is expected that a few more years are required until all the measures synergistically will deliver significant energy savings. In this respect the second National action plan (ESD 2006/32/EC) has been submitted by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (www.mcit.gov.cy) in 2011 to the Commission with all the measures necessary for achieving a target of 10% in year 2016. The emphasis is two fold firstly to implement fully the EPBD directive, provide incentives to existing buildings for efficiency improvements and then to develop an efficient, environmentally friendly public transport system. Two more elements have occurred in the recent years which will affect drastically the energy policy in Cyprus. Firstly the major catastrophic accident of the biggest power station in Limassol in July 2011 after the explosion at a near-by naval base. The capacity was 700 MWe (50% of total). This has resulted in severe problems to cover the demand and significant increase of electricity prices. The second is that Cyprus is exploiting its economic exclusive zone (EEZ) for hydrocarbons and has completed two rounds of authorising rights in the 12 sea blocks of the EEZ. Thus far the results from the research drilling (first round of licensing from one block) have proven significant reserves of natural gas whose recovery is expected to start by 2017. The gas will be transferred to land via a pipeline with the construction also of an LNG terminal. ; Cyprus Institute of Energy

Victoria Tin-bor Hui's War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe is a bold and original work. The book is bold in its goals and scope: the primary question motivating it is: "Why is it that political scientists and Europeanists take for granted checks and balances in European politics, while Chinese and sinologists take for granted a coercive universal empire in China?" (p. 1). This question is the starting point of an exploration of two very different outcomes in international politics. The first one is the "logic of balance", which replicates the classical Eurocentric perspective on the tendency towards equilibrium in international systems. The second one is the "logic of domination", illustrated in the book by Chinese theoretical perspectives and empirical example of a tendency toward universal domination. To answer the puzzle over the competing logics in this dichotomy the author will try to convince the reader of the usefulness of her "dynamic theory of world politics that blends Eurocentric and Sino-centric perspectives, connects the ancient and the modern, reconciles alternative trajectories and opposite outcomes, and incorporates persistent continuity and endogenous transformation" (p. 2). Part of the originality (which ideally should not be regarded as original) comes form blending mainstream IR theory with the comparative politics literature on state-formation and state-society relations. Moreover, refreshing insights from classical political theory -both European and Chinese- are common throughout the book. Her method and case selection are also creative and laudable. Tin-bor Hui compares the Ancient Chinese system during the Spring and Autumn period (656-453 BC) and Warring States period (453-221 BC) with the European system in the Early Modern period (defined as AD 1495-1815). Incorporating the case of Ancient China as an integral part of a theory of international politics, and thus departing from a too Eurocentric and temporarily restricted mainstream IR theory, is a praiseworthy project per se. Under the assumption that these systems are "comparable" she embraces the "uncommon foundation" method by using "paired comparisons of uncommon cases" (i.e. Mill's method of difference or most similar systems) in the search of common causal mechanisms that "combine differently with varying initial and environmental conditions to produce radically different outcomes" (p. 8). The overarching goal can be seen as breaking a deterministic view of political processes as a teleology towards balancing –which naively avoids a serious engagement with a "logic of domination." The author creates two theoretical concepts as her basic tools in achieving this goal: "mechanisms of self-strengthening reforms" and "self-weakening expedients." Each of these would be the causal mechanism explaining the "logic of domination" in the former (i.e. the dissolution of a plural system during the Warring States period and the formation of the Qin Empire in China) and the "logic balancing" in the latter (i.e. the preservation of a system of autonomous units in Europe) (p. 34). The core of the theory (and this is an unjust but necessary simplification) is that certain structural and agential motivations induce states to engineer self-strengthening mechanisms (or self-weakening expedients) that open the opportunity for domination (or balance of power). This reader could not agree more with the necessity of exploring alternative logics from the balance of power one. IR needs to engage more satisfactorily with the idea of domination and how it is achieved. The literature most linked to this concept is the one surrounding the "hegemonic stability theory" research program (see the work of Gilpin, Organski and Kugler, Keohane and Kindleberger). (1) The most relevant problem with this literature is that its preoccupation (obsession?) with war as a consequence of the end of hegemony (or of power transitions) leaves the primordial –and temporally and logically precedent!- matter of how states rise as a given independent variable –or, taking rise as the outcome, with a dependent variable that does not vary. The consequence is that IR has almost nothing to say about an essential part of the story of change in the system: how is it that the power to dominate is constructed. Although Tin-bor Hui attempts to have the final word for this political phenomenon, her work remains incomplete and not entirely satisfactory for several reasons. First, the book has a weak theory of state power. The explanation behind the outcome of systemic domination lies in a series of "self-strengthening mechanisms" (effective tax collection, meritocratic bureaucracy, ruthless military stratagems, inter alia) that enable a particular state to conquer the rest of the system. These mechanisms are the result of both agential initiatives and classical neorealist systemic emulation –i.e. states intra-system will tend to reproduce the same type of governmental mechanisms. The Qin state, located in an Ancient Chinese system composed by units pursuing such self-strengthening mechanisms, was enabled to achieve domination by applying these policies. The problem with this argument is that if we assume that these mechanisms are a systemic phenomenon, there is no convincing reason why it would be any easier for a self-strengthened state to conquer other self-strengthened states than it would be for a self-weakened state to conquer its pairs in another system. In other words, if the mechanisms are thought of as systemic, the advantages or disadvantages of pursuing self-strengthening or self-weakening mechanisms would balance out. Even more, it is not difficult to imagine the opposite logic being true –systems with "self-weakened states" would be more prone to Empire- since the existence of weak states opens a window of opportunity for conquer. (2) The gist of the confusion rests in the author, consciously or unconsciously, taking the risk to ignore one of the most basic premises in the discipline: power is relative. The power of a particular state in international politics has no meaning if it is not seen as a characteristic of one unit in comparison to another unit or to the whole system. The consequence of neglecting this maxim might well be that the idea of "self-strengthening mechanisms" as the explanation of domination turns out to have almost a negligible heuristic power. Moreover, her promise of a "dynamic" theory of change does not hold up to the expectations. In a sense, the author has a quite static perspective on history. While, as said before, she is probably right in arguing that the discipline has avoided a serious study of the issue of domination in international politics, the hypothesis that the road to domination lies in internal reorganization and administrative innovation is incomplete to say the least. There are structural and macro-historical processes of state growth that cannot be shunned in this type of analysis. The author would probably recognize that the Swiss cantons, even if implementing the most comprehensive self-strengthening reforms, were never capable of achieving domination of the European system. There is something special about states like France and Qin that made them able to engage in a quest for domination. This "something special" is one of the most basic and relevant processes in History: the rise and fall of political units. The reader cannot but be skeptical on how much of the causal mechanisms of domination lie in her self-strengthening ideas or in more macro-processes of rise and fall in the system. (3) On the other hand, the author has a big underlying assumption about states' motivation that should have been discussed in more depth. This is a kind of Mearsheimerian assumption that states always identify global (or regional) domination as the primary goal. There are several critiques that could follow from here. One could come from a "constitutive" perspective: if the units composing the systems are different in some essential elements, most probably the systems as a whole will be different in some way. One of the basic elements in the formation of the Modern European system was the creation of the idea of "sovereignty" as an inter-subjective constitutive characteristic of the system. Sovereignty needs to be part of an explanation, for example, of why Luxemburg could survive in a neighborhood of dangerous colossus –and at times domination seekers- such as France and eventually Germany. A Luxemburg located in Northern China, without the aid of sovereignty, would probably have fall victim to Qin might. (4) While this does not mean that two different systems cannot be compared, the creation of inter-subjective norms in systemic dynamics should have a more relevant place that the one given in this book. (5) Another theoretical concern is that self-strengthening and self-weakening mechanisms appear to be very prone to tautological and endogeneity problems. It might be argued that she is trying to explain state change by its effect -i.e. "X is a stronger state, because it was made stronger." The ultimate measurement of a self-strengthened state is to achieve domination; but domination is itself the dependent variable explained by the implementation of self-strengthening mechanisms. The idea that states apply self-strengthening mechanisms to dominate and dominate because they are self-strengthened is cyclical and problematic. (6) Even more, her theory assumes that conquest pays, that is, conquest self-strengthens. This is not wrong per se. Nonetheless, it might get the theory in some logical quagmires. For example, Napoleon's quasi domination of Europe was so parallel to Revolutionary France self-strengthening reforms (administrative reorganization, revolutionary military techniques, etc.) that it would be difficult to say which was the cause of which. Lastly, it may be the case that the author has a confused interpretation of her own mechanisms. Self-strengthening and self-weakening mechanisms appear to be causal mechanisms more linked to an explanation of "state power" than "systemic domination". (7) If this were true, she would need another set of mechanisms or variables to explain the occurrence of domination in international relations. An option to try to dissipate the doubts on how the mechanisms work would be to expand the cases studied to systems in which domination happened without self-strengthening (Philip's Macedonia comes as a possible example) or in which self-strengthening reforms did not come accompanied with domination (if we keep, as Tin Bor-hui does, domination as a necessarily territorial phenomenon, the United States in the Western Hemisphere comes to mind). War and State Formation is an interesting book, which by opening several lanes of inquiry -and by sometimes giving weak arguments for the issues at stake- encourages new and original research in these important areas of political science. This alone is sufficient to make the book a worthy and entertaining read.Notas: (1) Admittedly, these works differ a lot from scholar to scholar.(2) For a similar argument using Agent Base Modeling see Lars-Erik Cederman, Emergent Actors in World Politics, Princeton UP, Princeton, 1997, especially Chapter 4.(3) Furthermore, there is an empirical problem related to the conceptual one before discussed: the picture of a weak Europe unable to efficiently sustain wars of domination must be seen in a global context in which the European powers were rapidly conquering the world.(4) For an account of the importance of sovereignty as an essential constitutive characteristic of the European system of states see: Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors, Princeton UP, Princeton, 1994.(5) This makes one wonder how useful is her theory for the contemporary world…(6) This concern becomes clear when she argues that: "Domination-seekers in early modern Europe failed because they did not follow the logic of domination fully" (p. 109).(7) Which may explain why this reader was incapable of finding a satisfactory definition of "domination".*Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania