Societal fragilities and resilience: The emergence of peoplehood in Belarus

The article examines societal fragilities and local resilience strategies in Belarus with a particular focus on the notion of peoplehood. Premised on the idea of evolving forms of agency under the Anthropocene, and the emergent complexity-thinking in International Relations, the article draws on these approaches to societal fragilities and community resilience to understand and explain the unprecedented levels of mobilization occurring in Belarus since the disputed presidential election in August 2020. To this end, the article zooms onto the local communities to provide an analytical perspective on the study of resilience as self-organization. In line with complexity-thinking, it argues in favor of history-specific processual identities, shaped by the aspirations of a “good life,” and realized via local support infrastructures which lie at the heart of societal resilience in Belarus. Yet, the potential of all these elements to actualize into a sweeping transformative force, referred to as “peoplehood” in this article, is rare, and comes at a time of unprecedented crises and existential threats to the life of a community. The Belarusian society seems to be undergoing such a moment that not only makes it more resilient and adaptive to change; it also transforms it into a new form of societal being, self-aware of its worth, self-organized, and self-reliant on its inner capabilities to fight for a life of excellence. The article traces these moments of becoming with, and societal being, via a critical discussion of fragilities and the elements of resilience, actualized into peoplehood

Parametric Analysis of Cherenkov Light LDF from EAS for High Energy Gamma Rays and Nuclei: Ways of Practical Application

In this paper we propose a 'knee-like' approximation of the lateral distribution of the Cherenkov light from extensive air showers in the energy range 30-3000 TeV and study a possibility of its practical application in high energy ground-based gamma-ray astronomy experiments (in particular, in TAIGA-HiSCORE). The approximation has a very good accuracy for individual showers and can be easily simplified for practical application in the HiSCORE wide angle timing array in the condition of a limited number of triggered stations.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, proceedings of ISVHECRI 2016 (19th International Symposium on Very High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions

The European Union, Russia and the Eastern region: The analytics of government for sustainable cohabitation

This article applies the Foucauldian premise of governmentality and the analytics of government framework to demonstrate how exclusive modalities of power – of the European Union (EU) and Russia – and their competing rationalities relate, intersect and become, counter-intuitively, inextricable in their exercise of governance over the eastern neighbourhood. This particular approach focuses on power as a process to gauge the prospects for compatibility and cohabitation between the EU and Russia. Using original primary evidence, this article contends that cohabitation between these two exclusive power modalities is possible and even inevitable, if they were to legitimise their influence over the contested eastern region. It also exposes a fundamental flaw in the existing power systems, as demonstrated so vividly in the case of Ukraine – that is, a neglect for the essential value of freedom in fostering subjection to one’s authority, and the role of ‘the other’ in shaping the EU–Russian power relations in the contested regio

The Two Disjointed Faces of R&D and the Productivity Gap in Europe

This paper explores the determinants of productivity gaps within the European Union in computing, chemicals, basic metals and food manufacturing – four sectors that vary in terms of the intensity of sectoral R&D. Our analysis reveals that the main causes of these productivity gaps are intensity of unembodied or disembodied R&D activity and R&D embodied in purchased equipment and machinery, and their interplay. While disembodied and embodied R&D are both associated positively to closing productivity gaps, the interaction between the two does not have the same effect. There is no complementarity between these technology acquisition modes, despite both disembodied and embodied technology are crucial for productivity catch up. In a policy context, this suggests possible lack of coordination between R&D policy and technology transfer (that is, foreign direct investment, trade and industrial policy). We show, also, that the productivity gap between ‘peripheral’ (southern and eastern) and ‘north’ EU countries is widening

Measurement of Cosmic Ray Primary Energy with the Atmospheric Cherenkov Light Technique in Extensive Air Showers

The advantage and problems of the primary energy measurement using the Cherenkov light from extensive air showers are discussed. The problem of absolute energy calibration has been solved during the analysis of the data of complex QUEST experiment at the EAS-TOP array. The results of QUEST experiment has been used for the analysis of the data of pure Cherenkov light array Tunka

Technology choices and growth: testing and expanding the propositions of new structural economics in transition economies

We explore the relationship between broad development policies, finance and growth as approached by New Structural Economics (NSE) (Lin, 2012) with special reference to transition economies. On a sample of 164 economies for 1963-2004, our analysis has confirmed Lin’s (2012) conclusions that the type of development policy pursued, as captured by the Technology Choice Index (TCI), has significant effects on long term growth. To complement this finding, we demonstrate a time variant effect of TCI on growth whereby TCI is especially relevant prior to the 1990s (more than prior to the 80s). We also show that the effects of TCI on growth differ for low and middle income countries as compared to high income countries. For the former two groups the relationship is negative and positive for high income countries. Further to this, we also show that there is a significant relationship between financial sector distortions and other economic distortions typical of comparative advantage defying strategies as captured by high values of TCI. These results are especially strong for the 34 countries with the highest TCI values in our sample. We also find that a larger deviation in actual financial structure from its estimated optimal ratio further reinforces the negative effect of TCI on growth. Overall our results offer a strong confirmation of NSE’s propositions regarding the relationship between growth and TCI and TCI and financial development, on average and for the most distorted economies. However, the basic propositions of NSE have not been confirmed as a general case for transition economies (TE). Indeed we find that the relationships investigated do not follow the same patterns for TE as a group, and we further identify different patterns for CEEB countries on the one hand and CIS on the other hand. We propose some possible explanations of why these countries might be behaving differently