La violence, l'Etat et l'ethnicité dans la Corne de l'Afrique : au niveau local et mondial

Cet article se penche sur les relations changeantes entre la société locale et l'Etat dans la Corne de l'Afrique. L'impact du processus de mondialisation politique et économique qui se répercute également, inexorablement, sur les sociétés africaines transforme les conceptions et l'usage qui est fait de l'ethnicité, de l'identité de groupe et de la violence. On tente de distinguer trois niveaux d'interaction entre le niveau local et celui de l'Etat. Pour traiter du premier niveau, on décrit les évolutions qui se sont produites au sein d'une société agropastorale du sud de l'Ethiopie, les Suris, exemple typique d'une société locale transformée par la mondialisation. On s'aperçoit qu'à cause de leur insertion dans des interactions plus larges au niveau régional et national, la violence qui était intégrée dans la culture est redéfinié, qu'elle n'est plus ritualisée et qu'elle devient plus instrumentale. L'argumentation du deuxième et du troisième niveaux se concentre sur l'étude de l'évolution du cadre de la violence politique (de l'Etat) en Ethiopie et en Somalie. Les violences des groupes politiques et de l'Etat étaient étroitement liées à l'échec du projet de la modernisation des deux pays. Cependant, ces derniers sont très différents des point de vue des bases sociales et régionales sur lesquelles ils forment leur identité et se mobilisent politiquement. La recherche de l'impact social de la mondialisation économique et sociopolitique nous montre ainsi l'importance croissante des réponses violentes en tant que force de résistance et, de ce fait, constitue un sujet qui est loin d'être étudié en profondeur par les sociologues. (Résumé d'auteur

Disaster, Relief and Political Change in Southern Ethiopia: Developments from within Suri Society

This chapter describes responses to the ecological crisis and political changes in Ethiopia in the early 1990s among the Suri, an agropastoral group in K„fa Region, southern Ethiopia. Data are derived from fieldwork carried out in the area after the change of regime in 1991. Attention is paid to environmental conditions and the Suri subsistence system, relations between the Suri and neighbouring ethnic groups, drought and famine in the area, in particular in the 1980s, and the Suri attitude towards the interventions of outside agencies, interethnic conflict in the period 1984-1993, Suri recovery and adaptation in the early 1990s, and the effects of drought, famine, and political upheaval on Suri socioeconomic organization, local political relations, and ethnic identities and interethnic relations. Bibliogr., notes, refASC – Publicaties niet-programma gebonde

How to Play 3x3 Games: A Strategy Method Experiment

Using the strategy method (Selten 1967) we elicit subjects' strategies for playing any 2-person 3x3-game with integer payoffs between 0 and 99.In each of 5 tournaments, every strategy pair plays 500000 games.The frequency of pure strategy equilibrium play increases from 51% in the first to 74% in the last tournament, with the equilibria that maximize joint payoff being preferred when multiple exist.For games without pure equilibria, strategies are typically based on elements of the best-reply cascade: MAP (maximize the expected payoff against uniformly randomizing opponents), BR-MAP (best reply to MAP), and BR-BR-MAP (best reply to BR-MAP).game theory;experimental economics

Differential responses of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) to fin clip wounding and related stress: perspectives

The debate around fish welfare is intensifying in The Netherlands. As a result, more research is carried out to enhance knowledge on fish welfare in aquaculture. Detailed information is lacking on how production procedures causing discomfort to the fish may affect welfare. That fish must perceive adversive stimuli follows from the fact that nociceptive mechanisms similar to those in mammals are present in fish. However, whether and how nociceptive stimuli are perceived or interpreted by a fish is a far more difficult question that requires significantly more effort from fundamental research, both neurophysiological and behavioural studies, than now available. The study presented in this report aimed to define selected readout for the acute response to a supposedly painful stimulus: a standardised tailfin clip to a common carp. In conclusion, we succeeded to demonstrate differential, stronger responses to a presumed painful stimulus than to the handling stress per se associated with the administration of the pain stimulus. These parameters will be the focus of future research within this welfare project

Ethiopian Islam and the Challenge of Diversity

A perennial issue in the comparative study of Islam is how, as a faith and a way of life, it deals with diversity: religious, ethnic, or socio-cultural. This issue is all the more relevant in a world where globalizing discourses redefine traditional identities, including those of religious systems, both in their local (indigenous Asian and African) and universalist forms (Christianity, Islam). In many areas, complex and, in a way, exemplary patterns of mutual interaction and tolerance have developed between religious-communal groups. In Africa, such regions are found in Mali, Cameroon, Tanzania, Nigeria, and also Ethiopia. The history and current situation of Islam in Ethiopia, especially the northern part of the country, provide an interesting case study

Real-time train driver rescheduling by actor-agent techniques

Passenger railway operations are based on an extensive planning process for generating the timetable, the rolling stock circulation, and the crew duties for train drivers and conductors. In particular, crew scheduling is a complex process. After the planning process has been completed, the plans are carried out in the real-time operations. Preferably, the plans are carried out as scheduled. However, in case of delays of trains or large disruptions of the railway system, the timetable, the rolling stock circulation and the crew duties may not be feasible anymore and must be rescheduled. This paper presents a method based on multi-agent techniques to solve the train driver rescheduling problem in case of a large disruption. It assumes that the timetable and the rolling stock have been rescheduled already based on an incident scenario. In the crew rescheduling model, each train driver is represented by a driver-agent. A driver-agent whose duty has become infeasible by the disruption starts a recursive task exchange process with the other driver-agents in order to solve this infeasibility. The task exchange process is supported by a route-analyzer-agent, which determines whether a proposed task exchange is feasible, conditionally feasible, or not feasible. The task exchange process is guided by several cost parameters, and the aim is to find a feasible set of duties at minimal total cost. The train driver rescheduling method was tested on several realistic disruption instances of Netherlands Railways (NS), the main operator of passenger trains in the Netherlands. In general the rescheduling method finds an appropriate set of rescheduled duties in a short amount of time. This research was carried out in close cooperation by NS and the D-CIS Lab

The new Dutch timetable: The OR revolution

In December 2006, Netherlands Railways introduced a completely new timetable. Its objective was to facilitate the growth of passenger and freight transport on a highly utilized railway network, and improve the robustness of the timetable resulting in less train delays in the operation. Further adjusting the existing timetable constructed in 1970 was not option anymore, because further growth would then require significant investments in the rail infrastructure. Constructing a railway timetable from scratch for about 5,500 daily trains was a complex problem. To support this process, we generated several timetables using sophisticated operations research techniques, and finally selected and implemented one of these timetables. Furthermore, because rolling-stock and crew costs are principal components of the cost of a passenger railway operator, we used innovative operations research tools to devise efficient schedules for these two resources. The new resource schedules and the increased number of passengers resulted in an additional annual profit of 40 million euros ($60 million) of which about 10 million euros were created by additional revenues. We expect this to increase to 70 million euros ($105 million) annually in the coming years. However, the benefits of the new timetable for the Dutch society as a whole are much greater: more trains are transporting more passengers on the same railway infrastructure, and these trains are arriving and departing on schedule more than they ever have in the past. In addition, the rail transport system will be able to handle future transportation demand growth and thus allow cities to remain accessible. Therefore, people can switch from car transport to rail transport, which will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.