RWU Women’s Rugby to Become Varsity Sport in 2018

Athletics Department opts to create varsity status to provide more opportunities for women in sports

Crisis is governance : sub-prime, the traumatic event, and bare life

The article provides a critical analysis of the role of discourses of trauma and the traumatic event in constituting the ethico-political possibilities and limits of the subprime crisis. It charts the invocation of metaphors of a financial Tsunami and pervasive media focus on emotional ‘responses’ like fear, anger, and blame, suggesting that such traumatic discourses constituted the subprime crisis as a singular and catastrophic ‘event’ demanding of particular (humanitarian) responses. We draw upon the thought of Giorgio Agamben to render this constituted logic of event and response in terms of the concomitant production of bare life; the savers and homeowners who became ‘helpless victims’ in need of rescue. We therefore tie the ongoing production of the sovereign power of global finance to broader processes that entail the enfolding and securing of everyday financial subjects. These arguments are illustrated via an analysis of three subjects: the economy, bankers and borrowers. We argue that it was the movement between subject positions – from safe to vulnerable, from entrepreneurial to greedy, from victim to survivor, etc. - that marked out the effective manner of governance, confirming in this process sovereign categories of financial citizenship, asset based welfare, and securitisation that many would posit as the very problem. In short, (the way that the) crisis (was constituted) is governance

On the Day You Were Born: A Phenomenological Study of Fathers\u27 Experience of Being Present at Their Children\u27s Birth

This dissertation is a qualitative investigation into the lived experience of becoming a father through witnessing the event of childbirth. I analyze transcripts of conversations between five fathers and myself using a phenomenological method to distinguish meaningful and psychologically significant statements. I then weave these statements into a series of thematically and structurally consistent narratives that reflect the fathers\u27 attitudes and experiences concerning becoming and being a father. From these narratives, I draw together themes that appeared across multiple fathers\u27 stories. These themes consist of the father\u27s relationship with the social world, including fathers in relation to other fathers and to the social discourse on fatherhood; and the father\u27s relationship with the mother, particularly how the roles of mothers and fathers relate and are defined, the significance of the collaborative process of parenting between mothers and fathers, and what the mother\u27s relationship with the child means for the father. Also discussed are the themes of fathers\u27 experiences of derealization and ambivalence at their children\u27s births. Additionally, I examine the relationship between childbirth and the medical establishment and how the medicalization of childbirth affects fathers\u27 experience of birth

In the Balkans, investors operate within a devil’s circle

Promoting entrepreneurship is often viewed as a key component for generating growth in the transition economies of eastern Europe. Tim Vorley and Nick Williams write that tackling corruption has an important role in this process. Drawing on recent research in Bulgaria and Romania, they assess the challenges posed by corruption for entrepreneurs in the region, noting that the issue must be understood and tackled effectively if entrepreneurship is to have a positive and productive impact on national economies. Currently, investors cannot break out of a ‘devil’s circle’ in which they are forced to engage in corrupt practices themselves, if they are to get anything done

The role of informal protected areas in maintaining biodiversity in the Western Ghats of India

Although it is widely believed that an important function of protected areas is to conserve species that are unable to survive elsewhere, there are very few empirical studies in which a comparison is made between biodiversity of protected areas and that of the cultivated landscape surrounding them. We examined the diversity of trees, birds, and macrofungi at 58 sites in three land-use types in a tree-covered landscape in Kodagu district in the Western Ghats of India. Ten forest reserve sites in the formal protected area, and 25 sacred groves and 23 coffee plantations in the neighboring cultivated landscape were sampled. A total of 215 tree, 86 bird, and 163 macrofungus species were recorded. The forest reserve had a large number of trees that were restricted in their distribution, and the sacred groves had a large number of macrofungi. We observed that deciduous trees and non-forest-dwelling birds increased, and evergreen trees and forest-dwelling birds decreased with increasing intensity of land management. We found that trees having non-timber uses and macrofungi useful to the local people, as well as those with medicinal properties, were abundant in sacred groves. We found no significant differences in the distribution of endemic and threatened birds across the three land-use types. Although endemic trees were more abundant in the forest reserve than in sacred groves, threatened trees were more abundant in sacred groves than in the forest reserve. We attribute the high diversity in sacred groves to the native tree cover in shade coffee plantations. We conclude that informal protected areas are as important as formal ones for biodiversity conservation in Kodagu. We recommend that a conservation strategy that recognizes informal protection traditions is essential for successful biodiversity conservation in regions where formal reserves are surrounded by a matrix of cultivated land