Uneasy Promises: Critical Reflections on the Negotiated Reopening of Road and Railway between Armenia and Turkey.

Against the background of the currently shifting world order by the latest Russian invasion into Ukraine, the Armenian borders and boundaries with Turkey and Azerbaijan (both guarded by Russian military) too are subject of new movements, attentions, damages and promises. The territorial sealing and failed attempts at diplomatic rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey originate in diplomatic disputes regarding the recognition of the Armenian genocide, which peaked in 1915, and the ongoing territorial conflict between Armenia and Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan over the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh. In these “uneasy times” (Pandian: 2019) reopening the border as “progressing step” towards peace within discourses of conflict transformation however widely provokes fears in the Armenian society. What affective ambiguities – promises of economic opportunities, hopes, fears, economic and military threats - does the reopening of the border infrastructures evoke in the people in Armenia? How are the border infrastructures instrumentalized in order to unite as well as divide in this ethno-nationalized conflict? Basing my analysis on the “Promise of Infrastructure” (Annand, Appel and Gupta 2018) I aim to explore how the lived experiences of people with the mentioned border infrastructures challenge what could be seen as a promising milestone in conflict transformation. This paper questions the linear and state-centered understanding of conflict transformation processes, predicting growth, progress and peace in an uneasy, post-capitalist environment. It aims to blur the dichotomous separations between war and peace as well as stagnation and progress in the Armenian-Turkish diplomatic conflic

Evaluation of the impact of a Herd Health and Production Management programme in organic dairy cattle farms: a process evaluation approach

Animal health planning activities are not always providing a satisfactory positive impact on herd health and welfare. Moreover, evaluating the impact of advisory programmes is complex due to multiple interacting elements that influence its outcome. Therefore, measuring solely health outcomes is not sufficient: the whole process of the implementation and use of such programmes should be evaluated. In order to evaluate the impact of an intervention with a Herd Health and Production Management (HHPM) programme a process evaluation framework was designed and used. The intervention involved 20 organic dairy cattle farmers and their advisors, in both France and Sweden. In both countries 20 organic dairy farms were selected as control herds. The evaluation of the HHPM programme was based on: (a) the compliance to the programme; (b) the programme’s functions influencing herd health management practices and stimulating dialogue between farmers and advisors; (c) its effectiveness in terms of improving herd health compared with control farms. Complete compliance to the programme was fulfilled by 21 out of 40 farmers–advisors. Results from a questionnaire showed that the programme functioned as intended (e.g. by allowing early identification of herd health problems), stimulated change in farmers’ herd health management practices and farmer–advisor dialogue. Even though the majority of the users perceived that the programme contributed to herd health improvements, no significant differences in health outcomes were found when compared with control farms 12 months after the start of the intervention. The programme allowed creating an environment promoting the exchange of information between farmers and advisors, necessary to define pertinent advice in a farm-specific situation. Future research should aim at improving methods for the evaluation of the effect of advisory programmes, by identifying early indicators for effective advice and developing methods to evaluate the quality of advisory situations without interfering with them

Compte-rendu de la journée d’études : « Séries TV et Posthumain, Posthumain(s) en série(s) ».

La journée d’études «  Séries TV et Posthumain, Posthumain (s) en série(s) » a eu lieu le 24 novembre 2017. Elle a été organisée par Monica Michlin (EMMA EA741) et Claire Cornillon (RIRRA 21), avec le soutien de l’Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, ainsi que du CPER GUEST Saison 2 (avec retransmission des communications sur sa chaîne YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7xlgjTB4z2sEuOGQrhDQYA/videos). Les communications ont exploré les différents types de post-humain(s) représentés ..

Applying the 4Ps of social marketing to retain and engage participants in longitudinal cohort studies: Generation 2 Raine study participant perspectives

Background: Investigations of participant retention in longitudinal health and medical research, document strategies that work best but overlook social marketing’s capacity to influence participant retention. After applying the social marketing framework: the idea that determining what longitudinal participants ‘buy’ (product), at what cost (price), in what location (place) and through which communication channels (promotion), this paper aims to inform and enhance retention efforts. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted through in-depth interviews with participants from the Raine Study that began in Western Australia in 1989. The Generation 2 participants, initially enrolled into the Raine Study as babies by their parents (Generation 1), are now young adults invited to attend follow-up studies and tests every few years. Our study defined ‘active’ participants (n = 17) as those who agreed to attend their 27 year follow-up, and ‘inactive’ (n = 12) participants as those who had attended neither of the past two follow-ups (22 and 27 years). Results: Raine Study participants experienced core, actual and augmented product benefits. Inactive participants focused on the costs (price) associated with participation, and were more likely to suggest tele-health (place) strategies to overcome barriers to follow-up attendance. Both active and inactive participants found professional processes and friendly staff made the Raine Study environment appealing, suggested that social media (promotion) was underutilised, and offered novel ideas to enhance engagement. Conclusions: Social marketing can support the development of differentiated strategies addressing the unique needs and wants of active and inactive participants. Sophisticated cohort segmentation can reach participants in a more meaningful way, reinforce the study ‘brand’ and guard against attrition

Emerging Technology Tools for Qualitative Data Collection

Emerging technology tools enable qualitative researchers to collect text, audio, and visual data any time and any place. However, given many of these tools are cloud-based, they also present questions regarding security and confidential data collection. The uses, advantages, and drawbacks of emerging technology tools used for note-taking, collecting, managing, and sharing various forms of data will be presented within the context of qualitative data collection in instructional technology

Factors influencing the participation to individual and community forest conservation compensation agreements in Bolivia

The existing literature on conservation compensation programs shows that their outcomes depend on whether the project design correctly matches the causes of land-use behaviors as well as succeeds to motivate people to conserve nature in a profound and sustained manner by building on different types of motivations, without crowding-out the intrinsic ones. This study analyzed farmers' motivations to conserve forests or deforest in relation to a regional in-kind compensation program in the Bolivian Chaco. In this program, upstream households can voluntarily engage to protect their forests and water sources in exchange of in-kind compensations. The objective of this study was to test whether the program is indeed targeting the causes of deforestation behaviors and supporting existing motivations from local land users. We used deforestation data quantified on each individual household plot, using Hansen et al. (2013) global forest cover loss dataset, and a household survey conducted prior to start of the program in control communities (to which compensations have not been offered) and treatment communities (to which compensations have been offered). Firstly, we identified the causes of deforestation by ccomparing individual households' deforestation data against households' characteristics using multivariate tobit models, only using the communities to which the program was not proposed. Secondly, we identified the motivations for and barriers to participation in the program by comparing the characteristics of households that decided to participate and those that decided not to participate using multivariate logistic models. We compared the causes of deforestation to the motivations to participate in conservation program, classified into different types: financial and material motivations, social motivations and environmental motivations. We showed that the program is not targeting the socio-economic causes of deforestation through its compensations but that its communication and motivation strategy to align with local intrinsic motivations and social norms may be working. In addition to shedding a nexw light on the roots of farmers' deforestation behaviors in the Bolivian Chaco, these results will allow improving the design of conservation interventions so that they are consistent with sakgolders' motivations and assure the long term success of forest conservation

Adapting the Social Force Model for Low Density Crowds in Open Environments

International audienceThe Social Force Model (SFM) successfully reproduces many collective phenomena in evacuations or dense crowds. However, pedestrians behaviour is context dependent and the SFM has some limitations when simulating crowds in an open environment under normal conditions. Specifically, in an urban public square pedestrians tend to expand their personal space and try to avoid dense areas to reduce the risk of collision. Based on the SFM, the proposed model splits the perception of pedestrians into a large perception zone and a restricted frontal zone to which they pay more attention. Through their perceptions, the agents estimate the crowd density and dynamically adapt their personal space. Finally, the original social force is tuned to reflect pedestrians preference of avoiding dense areas by turning rather than slowing down as long as there is enough space. Simulation results show that in the considered context the proposed approach produces more realistic behaviours than the original SFM. The simulated crowd is less dense with the same number of pedestrians and less collisions occur, which better fits the observations of sparse crowds in an open place under normal conditions

Modélisation et simulation du comportement de groupes sociaux de piétons avec des relations sociales hétérogènes

International audienceThe nature of the social relationship within a pedestrian group influences the group's structure and behavior and thus its entitativity (i.e. the perception of a group as a unit by other pedestrians). However, existing crowd models ignore the diversity of social relationships and have limitations in reproducing group avoidance behaviors. The proposed model is an adaptation of the social force model that addresses group social relationships. The approach is calibrated by comparing the distances and angles between members of the simulated groups with observations in real crowds. Results show that intra-group distances are a key factor in collision avoidance behavior. Simulation of collision avoidance shows that group members behavior fits better with empirical data than the original model and that individuals avoid splitting groups. By simply tuning the distribution of social relationships in the simulated crowd, the model can be used to reproduce crowd behaviors in several contexts

TAKE: Drivers of non-take-up of social assistance in Belgium

TAKE - Reducing poverty through improving the take-up of social policie

L’ampleur du non-recours à la garantie de revenus aux personnes âgées, à l'intervention majorée et à l'allocation de chauffage chez les 65 ans et plus en Belgique

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