For a Modest Human Exceptionalism: Simone de Beauvoir and the 'New Materialisms'

The "new materialisms' offer an important critique of 'human exceptionalism, however they tend to overstate their case by ignoring those qualities of freedom that remain distinctive to human life. The paper turns to Simone de Beauvoir to make an argument for a more modest human exceptionalism

Public-private partnership role during the pandemic : A case of COVID-19 testing in the Republic of Latvia 2020

Funding Information: The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.The novelty of this research includes public-private partnerships (PPP) in emergency situations, especially during a pandemic, where there are only a few researched topics. The goal of this study is to answer the following research question: What is the role of PPP in achieving quick and effective COVID-19 testing during a new pandemic in a small country? The methods of this paper are based on a case study approach. In the beginning, a related literature review was done (keywords: public-private partnerships in COVID-19, testing of the COVID-19, health systems during the pandemic). The second step contains data collection about COVID19 in Latvia (2020). Finally, an analysis of the case and data was performed with the conclusion in the result. Results: The average number of tests in 2020 was 2355.99 (interval: 4.00–12,091.00) per day and 2141.73 (interval: 7.67–7365.77) per month. The private sector conducted around 95.78% per month to check COVID19 infection. Conclusion: The PPP role of COVID-19 testing during a pandemic in small countries contains extra resources for rapid and previously not established process organization that allows governments and the public sector to pay attention to other important questions. As a result, collaboration can decrease infection prevalence and mortality.Peer reviewe

ParliSearch - A system for large text corpus discourse analysis

Publisher Copyright: © 2016 The authors and IOS Press.The paper illustrates the ParliSearch - the system that enables easy discourse analysis in large text corpus, providing stem search with additional search criteria. The system contains verbatim reports from debates of plenary sittings of the European Parliament and the Saeima (the Parliament of Latvia).publishersversionPeer reviewe

Claiming the state : citizen-state relations and service delivery in rural India

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2013."February 2013." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-281).Who makes claims on the state and how? This dissertation examines the processes through which citizens seek to secure public resources from the state and, by extension, the patterns of participation and citizen-state relations that emerge. Using the case of rural India, I explore whether and how citizens navigate their local environments to demand public services such as drinking water, health services and education, or access to welfare and poverty reduction programs. My fieldwork in the state of Rajasthan, consisting of 400 in-depth interviews and a survey of 2210 households across 105 villages, reveals variation in the incidence and practice of claim-making, ranging from those who do not engage the state at all, to direct petitioning of officials, to strategies mediated through non-state actors and informal institutions. Such variation cannot be adequately explained by an individual's socioeconomic status, by the characteristics of formal institutions, or by levels of development in a locality. Rather, I find that claim-making practice is shaped by the degree to which a person is exposed to people and settings across such social and spatial lines. Through ties that extend beyond the immediate community and locality, a person encounters information and ideas about the state and its resources as well as an array of contacts that provide linkages to the state. Socio-spatial exposure across divisions of caste, class, neighborhood, or village expands both the opportunities and knowledge necessary for citizen-state engagement, increasing both the likelihood as well as the breadth of claim-making practice. These findings shed critical light on our understanding of both distributive politics (who gets what from the state) and democratic practice (who participates and how).by Gabrielle K. Kruks-Wisner.Ph.D

Crisis, voice and innovation in Maputo's solid waste management sector

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-82).This thesis explores responses to the problem of solid waste management (SWM) in two neighborhoods of Maputo, Mozambique in the wake of catastrophic flooding in 2000. In these neighborhoods, small-scale service providers began to organize door-to-door garbage collection on a fee-for-service basis. The emergence of community-level responses to a problem in the wake of a crisis the like the floods is not surprising in and of itself. What is surprising, however, is that the city of Maputo stepped in almost three years later, to finance and formalize what had been a private service through the extension of public contracts. What motivated the city to upgrade SWM services in these two poor, and traditionally underserved neighborhoods? Catastrophic flooding in 2000 and the implementation of a "garbage tax" in 2002 set in motion a chain of events that increased pressure on the city to improve garbage collection. The floods catapulted the issue of solid waste onto the local political agenda, creating the political will necessary for reform. The tax was a major driver of citizen protest, simultaneously angering residents and instilling them with a sense of entitlement to better service.(cont.) Citizen protest, in turn, pushed the city to improve performance in solid waste management and, ultimately, motivated the city to formalize its relationship with small-scale private providers. Foreign NGOs and donors have both helped and hindered this process. Several NGOs have played important intermediary and technical assistance roles. Yet other donors have undermined the city's ability to keep a working fleet of garbage trucks on the road by making donations in a top-down fashion without attention to maintenance and sustainability. Whereas residents of Maputo exercised voice through protest, city officials adopt a "beggars can't be choosers" mentality when interacting with donors. Together, theses stories illustrate the important dynamics of voice and accountability (or lack thereof) in shaping service-delivery reforms.by Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner.M.C.P

Dilemmas in the process of weight reduction: Exploring how women experience training as a means of losing weight

Patients diagnosed with obesity are usually offered group-based behavior interventions which include dietary advice and exercise programs. In particular, high-intensity training—combining weight lifting with aerobic exercising—has been proven effective for losing weight. Moreover, recent studies have shown that persons participating in high-intensity training are more likely to maintain their weight loss compared to persons with lower levels of physical activity. However, most of the research in the field has made use of quantitative methods focusing on the measurable effect of such interventions. Therefore, the aim of this study was to show how the training is experienced from a first-person perspective, namely the patients themselves. Our hope was to shed some new light on the process of weight loss that concerns more than the measurable “impacts” of the training. A qualitative approach was used based on interviews with five women selected from a primary healthcare clinic in Norway. Our results show that experiences of training are connected to the participants' general experience of being overweight. Both relationships to other people and earlier experiences are important for how the training is carried out and perceived. Five themes were identified supporting this line of argument: (1) the gaze of others; (2) a common ground; (3) dependence of close-follow up; (4) bodily discomfort as painful; and (5) aiming for results—an ambivalent experience. The results highlight the importance of finding the proper context and support for each patient's needs

The twilight of the Liberal Social Contract? On the Reception of Rawlsian Political Liberalism

This chapter discusses the Rawlsian project of public reason, or public justification-based 'political' liberalism, and its reception. After a brief philosophical rather than philological reconstruction of the project, the chapter revolves around a distinction between idealist and realist responses to it. Focusing on political liberalism’s critical reception illuminates an overarching question: was Rawls’s revival of a contractualist approach to liberal legitimacy a fruitful move for liberalism and/or the social contract tradition? The last section contains a largely negative answer to that question. Nonetheless the chapter's conclusion shows that the research programme of political liberalism provided and continues to provide illuminating insights into the limitations of liberal contractualism, especially under conditions of persistent and radical diversity. The programme is, however, less receptive to challenges to do with the relative decline of the power of modern states

Constitutivism

A brief explanation and overview of constitutivism