Application of the systems approach : an information and decision model for the hog enterprise

Includes vita."Subject of Dissertation: The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a dynamic model for hog enterprises in which a complete information system is incorporated. It will provide the farmer with several plans of action, each yielding expected values for the different criteria that might relate to his goals. A plan will be selected for detailed examination as to its financial feasibility, the risk and uncertainty involved and the operational procedure for implementing the plan and checking the implementation. Before building and using the actual model, a review of the relevant literature will be made in section one. In the first chapter, some commonly available methods in farm planning are critically reviewed and their usefulness for planning hog management decisions is discussed. Appendix A defines some elements of the specialized jargon used in systems approach and simulation and describes some important aspects of the method of systems approach. Chapter Two reviews the use by previous researchers of simulation models for planning hog management. Section Two of this study is devoted to the development of a complete information and decision model for planning Missouri hog farms. The specific objectives of the study and the construction of the model are described in Chapter Three. The data that goes into the model, including the prediction of the most relevant prices are reported in Chapter Four. Chapter Five provides some elements of economic theory in relation to the decision making on hog farms concerning output and expansion. Simulation of the decision making is carried out in Section Three. Response surfaces with respect to different criteria are estimated through a systematic simulation procedure and a statistical analysis of the results is made. This is reported in Chapter Six. The practical use of the model for planning and control of the hog operation is described in Chapter Seven. A final chapter summarizes the approach, draws conclusions and makes suggestions for further research in this domain."--Page 4.Includes bibliographical references

Body and affect in the intercultural encounter

The volume draws from Ren‚ Devisch's encounters with groups in southsaharan Africa, primarily. The author had the privilege to immerse himself, around the clock, in the Yakaphones' activities and thoughts in southwest DR Congo from 1972 to 1974, and intermittently in Kinshasa's shanty towns, from 1986 to 2003. The author first examines what sparked his choice to come to Congo, and then to pursue research among the Yakaphones in the borderland with Angola. He then invites us to follow the trajectory of his plural anthropological view on today's multicentric world. It leads us to his praise for honorary doctor Jean-Marc Ela's work. He then examines the proletarian outbursts of violence that rocked Congo's major cities in 1991 and 1993. These can be read as a settling of scores with the disillusioning colonial and missionary modernisation, along with president Mobutu's millenarian Popular Movement of the Revolution. Furthermore, after considering the morose reduction of a major Yaka dancing mask into a mere museum-bound curio in Antwerp, the book unravels the Yakaphones' perspectives on spirits and sorcery's threat. It also analyses their commitment to classical Bantu-African healing cults, along with their parallel consulting physicians and healers. By sharing the Yakaphones' life-world, the analysis highlights their body-group-world weave, interlaced by the principle of co-resonance. A phenomenological and perspectivist look unfolds the local actors' views, thereby disclosing the Bantu-African genius and setting for a major reversal of perspectives. Indeed, seeing 'here' from 'there' allows the author to uncover some alienating dynamics at work in his native Belgian Flemish-speaking culture. To better grasp the realm of life beyond the speakable and factual reasoning, the approach occasionally turns to the later Lacan's focus on the unconscious desire, the body and its affects. The book addresses students and researchers in the humanities and, more broadly, all those immersed in the heat of the encounter with the culturally different.Wetensch. publicati

Central Africa: Sociocultural Aspects

status: publishe