Experiential Training to Address Secondary Traumatic Stress in Aid Personnel

Existing studies indicate the widespread existence of secondary traumatic stress (STS) in aid personnel and suggest the need for preventive and response strategies. This study examined the effectiveness of an integrated approach to reducing STS among aid personnel through a model that used psychoeducation, psychodrama, and cognitive behavioral resolution techniques. Data were collected pre- and post-intervention with the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) (Stamm, 2009) and at a two-month follow-up (TMFU) for the intervention and control groups. An analysis of variance test was used to evaluate whether the intervention group showed more change on ProQOL scores than did the control groups. The results were not significant, indicating a small decrease in STS and burnout symptoms and a slight increase in compassion satisfaction. However, results from the TMFU open questionnaire suggested that retention of learning was higher with the intervention group than with the active control group. This finding challenges the widely held assumption that training is an effective modality of support for aid personnel exposed to trauma and traumatized populations, and underscores the urgent need to conduct evidence-based study of the efficacy of training for STS mitigation. The pilot research the author conducted (Gertel Kraybill, 2013) as antecedent to this dissertation, using the expressive trauma integration (ETI) model in a format of six individual sessions incorporating expressive therapy and psychoeducation, offers a promising alternative to existing STS training. The reality of increasing natural disasters and conflicts means that the number of aid personnel exposed to traumatized populations is certain to grow, and aid agencies must, as a matter of priority, expand their understanding of what is effective in supporting trauma-exposed staff

La visión de Buenos Aíres en cincuenta años de poesía borgiana.

Sin resume

Arab Youth: A Contained Youth?

Young people in the Arab world increasingly have to struggle with economic hardship and difficulties to start their own lives, although the majority is better educated than ever before. The problematic labor market situation combined with weak public schemes to support young careers force large sections of young people to postpone their ambitions to marry. This period of delayed marriage is captured as 'waithood'. I will argue that this term is misleading. Two points of critique apply: The social dimension of waiting exceeds the status of remaining inactive until something expected happens; the ever-changing present continuously generates new realities. Simultaneously uncertainties and insecurities have dramatically expanded since 2011 and further limit livelihood opportunities and future perspectives, particularly of the youth. Young people are hence becoming both, increasingly frustrated and disadvantaged the longer they "wait", and even more dependent on parents and kin networks. This hinders them to develop their personality – they rather have to accommodate with values that are not always suitable to master the present requirements of a globalizing world. In this paper I will inquire, in how far young people of the Arab world have thus to be considered as a “contained youth”

Can Public Policy Help to Promote Micro-Enterprises Success in the Context of an Economic Downturn? The Case of Argentina

The paper introduces the question of micro enterprises success in Argentina in the context of the 2007-2008 international financial crisis that overlaps with the lagged effects of the previous domestic downturn of 2001-2002. The work focuses on three aspects of the micro enterprises that have not been sufficiently studied in the literature on emerging economies: entrepreneurial profile of the firm-owner, performance and profile of the micro-entrepreneurs benefited by public policies. Results: according to the entrepreneurial profile four groups were identified, the performance in each group was directly related to entrepreneur’s degree of dedication and inversely related to condition of being previously unemployed and public policies were found to be pro-poor biased.micro enterprise, entrepreneur, public policies, Argentina

El Acuerdo General sobre Comercio de Servicios: ¿un nuevo reto para la Universidad Pública en la Argentina?

Classification-JEL: I21, I28Globalization, developing countries, higher education, free market

Spatialities of Hunger: Post-National Spaces, Assemblages and Fragmenting Liabilities

This contribution addresses the casual structure and spatialities of food insecurity. Drawing from scholarly debates on periphery, I illustrate the limited explanatory range of state-centered periphery-approaches in order to comprehend the recent constellations of conflict and hunger. I argue that increasingly dynamic and post-national spaces of food insecurity emerge. Due to complex power geometries, these spaces are driven by realigning and territorially-stretched arrangements of action (e.g. global producer-consumer relations), by technologically enhanced new temporal configurations (e.g. speculation and high frequency trade in food), by the performances of metrics (e.g. models of food price and value-constructions shaping food security), and by the reflexive effects of knowledge production. In order to comprehend these dynamics, concepts capable of capturing new assemblages are required