Resistance to the dominant economic discourses : making sense of the economy from a working-class neighborhood

Field of study: Sociology.Dr. Clarence Y. H. Lo, Dissertation Supervisor.Includes vita."May 2018."This study explores the way that working-class people contest dominant economic discourses and how they develop alternative explanations for their economic situation. Based on qualitative interviews, participant observation, and archival research in an urban working-class neighborhood of Spain, findings are that the workers do not reproduce dominant economic discourses because there is an alternative economic discourse that has gained importance in the community. This alternative discourse, with a clear Marxist base, stands for workers' rights and the welfare state, rejects cuts on the budget for social services, and blames the national elites for the current economic crisis. The dissertation analyzes the three historical processes that produced this alternative discourse, (1) the neighborhood movement for the improvement of the living conditions in the community, (2) the resistance against the Franco dictatorship, and (3) the workers' struggle to achieve labor and social rights through the organized labor movement. Findings also reveal how the members of the community are socialized into this alternative discourse and how the discourse is used in the everyday life of the community to contest dominant economic discourses. The findings demonstrate that the very pro-worker economic discourse that allows workers to contest mainstream economic discourses constitutes a major element of demobilization of the community. Finally, the paper also provides important insights on the socializing role of neighborhood organizations and workers' unions and political parties, as well as an analysis of how Spanish urban workers understand social stratification.Includes bibliographical references (pages 368-385)

Interaction and Task Patterns in Symbiotic, Mixed-Initiative Interaction

In this paper we explain our concept of Interaction and Task Patterns, and discuss how such patterns can be applied to support mixed-initiative in symbiotic human-robot interaction both with service and industrial robotic systems

The role of communicative acts in the Dream process: engaging Moroccan migrants in a community development initiative in urban Spain

Abstract The present article offers relevant insights into how the evidence-based community development initiative known as the Dream process has had a positive impact on the inclusion, participation and leadership of a marginalized community of Moroccan immigrants in urban Spain. More specifically, we analyse how the commitment to promote dialogic communicative acts and to reduce power communicative acts during the process has attenuated some of the race, gender and class barriers that hindered the community's involvement in dialogic and decision-making spaces aimed at improving their living conditions. In this article, we first introduce the state of the art using studies that have examined the role of interaction and deliberation in community development processes in disadvantaged contexts. Then, we briefly refer to the deterioration of the living conditions of the Moroccan immigrant population in Spain. Finally, we present the main results obtained from the qualitative case study research carried out through the implementation of the communicative methodology. This case study provides both theoretical claims and practical orientations to examine how dialogic approaches can contribute to community development processes in contexts severely affected by racial segregation and poverty

Reflexions a l'entorn d'una experiència de cooperació educativa a Guatemala

Abstract not availabl

Positivity-causality competition: a road to ultimate EFT consistency constraints

Effective field theories (EFT) are strongly constrained by fundamental principles such as unitarity, locality, causality, and Lorentz invariance. In this paper, we consider the EFT of photons (or other $U(1)$ gauge field) and compare different approaches to obtain bounds on its Wilson coefficients. We present an analytic derivation of the implications of unitarity (linear and non-linear positivity bounds) and compare these constraints with the requirement of causal propagation of the photon modes around non-trivial backgrounds generated by external sources. We find that the low energy causality condition can give complementary constraints to the positivity bounds. Applying both constraints together can significantly reduce the allowed region of the photon EFT parameters.Comment: 37 pages + appendices and references, 23 figure