Do Electoral Systems Matter?: Candidate and Organizational Activity in U.S. Local Elections Under Cumulative Voting, Districting, and At-Large

This study compares candidate and organizational activity in U.S. local elections under cumulative voting, districting, and at-large electoral arrangements. Candidates\u27 campaign activities and their evaluations of their electoral system were measured with a mail survey conducted in the spring and summer of 1996 and winter of 1997. Preliminary results indicate that electoral systems have a negligible impact on the ways in which candidates contest elections

A Preliminary Report on the use of Parasitic Nematodes of the Earthworm for Class Study and Cytological Research

A preliminary investigation shows the nematode parasites of the earthworm to be excellent material for cytological and embryological research, in addition to being useful as material for class room study. Their neglected study has probably been due to lack of suitable culture methods. It has been found that the nematodes will live on a 2% agar plate upon which small bits of red beef are placed. For optimum prolificity, the temperature should be kept constant at 15° C. With the use of this method, the author has kept a rapid growing culture alive for the past six months. The ova of these nematodes have certain advantages over those of Ascaris, being less impervious. Several cleavages may occur during a two-hour class period. In addition, the Golgi material can be easily demonstrated and can be displaced by means of the ultracentrifuge. The eggs will cleave in the centrifuge at a force of 30,000 times gravity and the adult worms, embryos, and eggs will remain alive for at least 15 hours at that force. Upon centrifuging, the eggs are stratified into the following layers: (1) oil globules at the centripetal pole, (2) transparent cytoplasm, (3) granules at the centrifugal pole. Immediate examination of the eggs upon removal from the centrifuge often reveals many pseudopodia-like processes flowing out near the centripetal pole; and these, in many cases, are completely cut off. A study is being undertaken to determine whether or not chromosome diminution occurs in these parasites

Instrumental Speeches, Morality, and Masculine Agency among Muinane People (Colombian Amazon)

Individuals among People of the Center (Colombian Amazon) produced numerous discursive depictions of themselves and of others, regarding their own competence and morality and others’ lacks thereof. Here, I attend particularly to a set of portrayals that pertained mostly to men: those concerning forms of knowledge that each People of the Center deemed uniquely their own. Individuals stressed the great amount of knowledge they possessed, the propriety of their processes of acquisition and the legitimacy of their use of it, its effectiveness and authentically patrilineal character, and the respect and fear others had of them because of it. They also criticized others for shortcomings in these regards. They articulated their evaluations in terms of what they found to be admirable or desirable in gendered human subjectivity and action, in the frame of a perspectival cosmos permeated by predatory relations. I argue that individuals produced such portrayals motivated by desire to embody a certain ideal of masculine agency, and spurred by their awareness of the likelihood that their own actions and subjectivities would be portrayed as immoral, animalistic or otherwise inadequate by others around them. As a whole, the essay stresses the importance of attending ethnographically to individuals’ subjectivity. Individuos entre la Gente de Centro (Amazonía colombiana) solían producir numerosos retratos discursivos concernientes a su propia competencia y moralidad y a la ausencia de éstas entre los demás. En este ensayo, enfoco en particular ciertos retratos que sobre todo trataban sobre hombres: aquellos referentes a formas de conocimiento que cada grupo de Gente de Centro consideraba exclusivamente suyo. Los individuos en cuestión enfatizaban la gran cantidad de conocimiento que poseían,la rectitud protocolaria del proceso de su adquisición,su efectividad,su carácter auténticamente patrilineal, y el temor y respeto que éste despertaba entre los demás. También criticaban a los demás por sus insuficiencias en estos sentidos. Formulaban sus evaluaciones en términos de lo que consideraban admirable o despreciable en el comportamiento y la acción humanos, distinguiendo entre los géneros. Contextualizaban estas evaluaciones en un cosmos perspectivista permeado por relaciones depredadoras. Arguyo que los individuos producían estos retratos motivados por el deseo de encarnar un cierto ideal de agencialidad masculina y azuzados por la plena conciencia de la probabilidad de que sus acciones y subjetividades serían retratadas como inmorales, bestiales o de cualquier manera inadecuadas por quienes les rodeaban. El ensayo en general recalca la importancia de prestarle atención a la subjetividad de los individuos al hacer etnografía

Believing in the Gift: a Case of Successful Relationships of Exchange in the Colombian Amazon

Since the late 70’s, the Colombian anthropologist Juan Alvaro Echeverri has logged more than five years in Uitoto and closely related communities in the Colombian Amazon. His relationships with individuals there have been long-lived and surprisingly successful, in contrast with the often-noted disappointment of many philanthropically oriented outsiders—NGO agents, anthropologists, missionaries, government personnel—who come to find ‘their Indians’ to be too materialistic and demanding, and of the Indians who cease to find these would-be philanthropists generous, desirable, or even interesting interlocutors. This essay, meant to be both an ethnographic and theoretical exposition on the forms and implications of substance exchange and an entertaining manifesto of admiration for an exemplary Amazonianist scholar, proves that the parties involved have achieved, and continue to achieve, practical, satisfying, and sustainable relationships, mostly through material gifts that index their mutual recognition as moral interlocutors

A Non-Traditional Assessment of Learning: The School for New Learning\u27s Unified Approach to Learning and Life. Final Report submitted to the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Institutions

For the last two years, DePaul University\u27s School for New Learning has been funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) to articulate, refine and evaluate a competency-based framework for adult learners. The result--an unusual GENERALIST approach to competence--provides the conceptual underpinnings for the now fully realized school. Rather than dwell on a demographic evaluation report (although statistical information is available), the Project Directors have chosen to present the philosophy, principles and processes which shape this new definition of a B.A. degree. Central to the School\u27s design is that it provide an environment which is learner-centered. Thus, it has been exciting to discover in the course of this project an historical foundation for key ideas in this program--the roots of the School\u27s nontraditional approach to unifying learning and life. These ideas will be presented in the following paper. Documents produced for the development of the entire program (which was never seen as distinct from the funded project) are appended