121 research outputs found
‘Capitalism a Nuh’ Wi Frien’ : the formatting of farming into an asset, from financial speculation to international aid
This paper deciphers the formatting of farming into an asset by tracking the modalities by which financial calculation is enabled across different sites of agency. The first focus of our analysis are commodity futures markets, which have witnessed a double spike in prices in 2008 and in 2012. In the paper, we look at these hikes as the outcome of endogenous dynamics, caused by the changing makeup of market participants after 2000, which turned futures markets into resources for hedging commodity index-linked derivative products. We subsequently analyse the increasing reliance on financial actors placed by public development agencies that channel funds through private equity initiatives to acquire and invest in farmland. To complete our analysis, we finally set our contribution alongside the alternative represented by food-sovereignty, which offers the promise of heeding to the needs engendered from within the peasant milieu, as opposed to subjugating it to extrinsic quantitative metrics
‘Capitalism A Nuh’ Wi Frien’. The formatting of farming into an asset, from financial speculation to international aid
This paper deciphers the formatting of farming into an asset by tracking the modalities by which financial calculation is enabled across different sites of agency.
The first focus of our analysis are commodity futures markets, which have witnessed a double spike in prices in 2008 and in 2012. In the paper, we look at these hikes as the outcome of endogenous dynamics, caused by the changing makeup of market participants after 2000, which turned futures markets into resources for hedging commodity index-linked derivative products.
We subsequently analyse the increasing reliance on financial actors placed by public development agencies that channel funds through private equity initiatives to acquire and invest in farmland.
To complete our analysis, we finally set our contribution alongside the alternative represented by food-sovereignty, which offers the promise of heeding to the needs engendered from within the peasant milieu, as opposed to subjugating it to extrinsic quantitative metrics
Black-hole binaries: life begins at 40 keV
In the study of black-hole transients, an important problem that still needs
to be answered is how the high-energy part of the spectrum evolves from the
low-hard to the high-soft state, given that they have very different
properties. Recent results obtained with RXTE and INTEGRAL have given
inconsistent results. With RXTE, we have found that the high-energy cutoff in
GX 339-4 during the transition first decreases (during the low-hard state),
then increases again across the Hard-Intermediate state, to become unmeasurable
in the soft states (possibly because of statistical limitations). We show
Simbol-X will be able to determine the spectral shape with superb accuracy. As
the high-energy part of the spectrum is relatively less known than the one
below 20 keV, Simbol-X will provide important results that will help out
understanding of the extreme physical conditions in the vicinity of a
stellar-mass black hole.Comment: Proc. "Simbol-X: Focusing on the Hard X-Ray Universe", Paris, 2-5
Dec. 2008, ed. J. Rodriguez and P. Ferrando; 4 pages, 3 figure
- …