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Towards a conceptualization of casual protest participation: Parsing a case from the Save RoĆia MontanÄ campaign
There is currently an empirical gap in the literature on protest participation in liberal democracies which has overwhelmingly focused on Western Europe and North America at the expense of Eastern Europe. To contribute to closing that gap, this article reviews findings from a multi-method field study conducted at FĂąnFest, the environmental protest festival designed to boost participation in Save RoĆia MontanÄ, the most prominent environmental campaign in Romania. By contrast to its Western counterparts, Romania has seen markedly lower levels of involvement in voluntary organizations that are a key setting for mobilization into collective action. Concurrently, experience with participation in physical protests is limited amongst Romanians. Specifically, the article probes recent indications that social network sites provide new impetus to protest participation as an instrumental means of mobilization. Dwelling on a distinction between experienced and newcomers to protest, results indicate that social network site usage may make possible the casual participation of individuals with prior protest experience who are not activists in a voluntary organization. Whilst this finding may signal a new participatory mode hinging on digitally networked communication which is beginning to be theorized, it confounds expectations pertaining to a net contribution of social network site usage to the participation of newcomers to protest
Values in Exchange: Ambiguous Ownership, Collective Action, and Changing Notions of Worth in Romanian Mutual Fund Industry
This paper analyzes the political disputes and legal contentions occasioned by the process of regulatory reform undergone by Romanian mutual fund industry. Stirred by Romaniaâs accession into the European Union in 2007 and prompted by the numerous financial scandals affecting the market right from its creation in 1994, the reform is meant as a reconfiguration of the investment philosophy characterizing the capital market. My claim is that the uneasy reception of the new institutional arrangement is related to the shifting premises for the formation of value and the deeper changes in the prevalent conceptions of worth associated with Romaniaâs economic transition
Assessing the Impact of Strategic Global Entry from Cultural Research Perspective in Marketing: A Case of Oil and Gas Industry in Romania
Breaking into a new market is a classic path to business growth. Ability to understand consumption
experience of consumers is a major concern of todayâs marketers, most especially in view of the rise of
experiential marketing approaches that seek to re-enchant people through consumption (Schmitt, 1999,
2003). Service businesses, in particular, are being urged to have a global view on what types of
experiences to organize for consumers and how they should be provided. One of the entry strategy of a
successful global organization is to research the market they are about to enter and most marketers are
now turning to ethnographers.
Ethnography has therefore, devised a compilation of retrospective and introspective consumer narratives
called âbig storiesâ in contrast to âsmall storiesâ Therefore, ethnography of consumption has evolved
towards a double method featuring, on one hand, observations that generate âsmall storiesâ and, on the
other, introspection that generates âbig storiesâ. Ethnography of consumption has been strengthened by
the shift from a researcher-devised retrospective narrative in an interview form to an introspective
narrative that is produced, fine-tuned and diffused by the consumer in the shape of a text diary, audio
diary or video diary (Caru and Cova, 2008). This non-empirical article is to detail the major roles of
ethnographers when a company wants to enter an international market. Romania is the largest oil
producer in Central and Eastern Europe with reserves of 956 million barrels. According to the 2008 BP
Statistical Energy Survey, Romania produced an average of 105.4 thousand barrels of crude oil per day
in 2007, 0.12% of the world total and a change of 0.9 % compared to 2006. The country is a net oil
importer, and according to the 2008 BP Statistical Energy Survey, Romania consumed an average of
229.29 thousand barrels a day of oil in 2007, 0.27% of the world total and a change from 2006 of 10.44
tbpd. This non-empirical article is to look into the entry strategies of oil multinationals wishing to do
business in Romani
Geographically touring the eastern bloc: British geography, travel cultures and the Cold War
This paper considers the role of travel in the generation of geographical knowledge of the eastern bloc by British geographers. Based on oral history and surveys of published work, the paper examines the roles of three kinds of travel experience: individual private travels, tours via state tourist agencies, and tours by academic delegations. Examples are drawn from across the eastern bloc, including the USSR, Poland, Romania, East Germany and Albania. The relationship between travel and publication is addressed, notably within textbooks, and in the Geographical Magazine. The study argues for the extension of accounts of cultures of geographical travel, and seeks to supplement the existing historiography of Cold War geography
Against the Tide. A Critical Review by Scientists of How Physics and Astronomy Get Done
Nobody should have a monopoly of the truth in this universe. The censorship and suppression of challenging ideas against the tide of mainstream research, the blacklisting of scientists, for instance, is neither the best way to do and filter science, nor to promote progress in the human knowledge. The removal of good and novel ideas from the scientific stage is very detrimental to the pursuit of the truth. There are instances in which a mere unqualified belief can occasionally be converted into a generally accepted scientific theory through the screening action of refereed literature and meetings planned by the scientific organizing committees and through the distribution of funds controlled by "club opinions". It leads to unitary paradigms and unitary thinking not necessarily associated to the unique truth. This is the topic of this book: to critically analyze the problems of the official (and sometimes illicit) mechanisms under which current science (physics and astronomy in particular) is being administered and filtered today, along with the onerous consequences these mechanisms have on all of us.\ud
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The authors, all of them professional researchers, reveal a pessimistic view of the miseries of the actual system, while a glimmer of hope remains in the "leitmotiv" claim towards the freedom in doing research and attaining an acceptable level of ethics in science
On the Limits of Liberalism in Participatory Environmental Governance: Conflict and Conservation in Ukraine\u27s Danube Delta
Participatory management techniques are widely promoted in environmental and protected area governance as a means of preventing and mitigating conflict. The World Bank project that created Ukraineâs Danube Biosphere Reserve included such âcommunity participationâ components. The Reserve, however, has been involved in conflicts and scandals in which rumour, denunciation and prayer have played a prominent part. The cases described in this article demonstrate that the way conflict is escalated and mitigated differs according to foundational assumptions about what âthe politicalâ is and what counts as âpoliticsâ. The contrasting forms of politics at work in the Danube Delta help to explain why a 2005 World Bank assessment report could only see failure in the Reserveâs implementation of participatory management, and why liberal participatory management approaches may founder when introduced in settings where relationships are based on non-liberal political ontologies. The author argues that environmental management needs to be rethought in ways that take ontological differences seriously rather than assuming the universality of liberal assumptions about the individual, the political and politics
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation - 2000 Annual Report
Contains mission statement, president's message, project summaries, program information, grants list, financial statements, and list of board members and staff
Considerations about Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Economic Growth in the Digital Economy
Three technological trendsâthe omnipresence of information in digital form, the generalised use of computer networks, and the rapid proliferation of the World Wide Webâhave profound implications for the way intellectual property (IP) is created, distributed, and accessed by every sector of society. In the last ten years much discussion of these issues has occurred in the literature and political and legislative domain. The information infrastructure offers an extraordinary ease of access to a vast array of information and peril for information to be reproduced inappropriately and for information access to be controlled in new and problematic ways. IPR regimes affect the diffusion of scientific knowledge, the innovation process and, ultimately, economic performance. Information technology raised some problems regarding the protection of intellectual property and drived to the discovery of a large number of solutions during past years. This paperâs purpose is to reveal what is the situation regarding IPR protection, economic growth and innovation in Romania, in the context of digital economy.intellectual property rights (IPR), innovation, economic growth, digital economy, Romania.
The political economy of convergence: The case of IFRS for SMEs.
This paper examines the processes used by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), in achieving widespread convergence to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by developing economies. Global convergence of financial reporting standards is a politically motivated agenda. The movement towards standardisation of financial reporting has been described in various ways including, adoption, application, transitioning, implementation (Brown and Tarca 2012), harmonization (Strouhal 2012) and convergence (Stevenson 2012; Street 2012; Pawsey, Brown and Chatterjee 2013). In this paper the term convergence encapsulates the efforts by developing countries to revise their national standards to be the same as IFRSs. The IFRS for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (IFRS for SMEs) was partly to facilitate developing economiesâ commitment to convergence (UNCTAD 2009). Introducing a two-tier system implied by a special IFRS for SMEs is the first synthesis of the international convergence process (Rodrigues and Craig 2007). Given that small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly important in the global economy, it is equally important that there is a clear set of principles underpinning financial reporting for these entities. However, there is limited discussion on the development of the IFRS for SMEs in the academic literature. Only very recently have academics from developing countries engaged in discussions on IFRS for SME adoption (Phang and Mahzan 2013). Therefore, this paper provides an understanding of the activities that led to the promulgation of the standard and the efforts of the World Bank, the United Nations and other international organisations to bring this issue onto IASBâs agenda since early 2000. This paper is timely as the IASB has commenced its comprehensive review of the IFRS for SMEs (IASB 2012)
Values in Exchange: Ambiguous Ownership, Collective Action, and Changing Notions of Worth in Romanian Mutual Fund Industry
This paper analyzes the political disputes and legal contentions occasioned by the process of regulatory reform undergone by Romanian mutual fund industry. Stirred by Romaniaâs accession into the European Union in 2007 and prompted by the numerous financial scandals affecting the market right from its creation in 1994, the reform is meant as a reconfiguration of the investment philosophy characterizing the capital market. My claim is that the uneasy reception of the new institutional arrangement is related to the shifting premises for the formation of value and the deeper changes in the prevalent conceptions of worth associated with Romaniaâs economic transition.financial regulation, mutual funds, anthropology of finance
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