Events In Argentina Research Articles

Compound Hot and Dry Events in Argentina and Their Connection to El Niño‐Southern Oscillation

ABSTRACTThis work studies the simultaneous and sequential occurrence of hot and dry months in the summer season in Argentina, north of 40°S, based on three different databases: meteorological stations, a gridded observational dataset and a reanalysis product. The influence of the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) over the occurrence of these compound events is specially analysed using a logistic regression model. Monthly maximum temperature and precipitation data are used for the period 1979–2022 in four sub‐regions of Argentina: Northwestern Argentina (NOA), Northeastern Argentina (NEA), Cuyo (central‐western Argentina) and the Pampas (central‐eastern Argentina). Simultaneous hot and dry months and hot months preceded by dry months are the most frequent compound events. The highest frequencies are found in the centre part of the study region and NEA for simultaneous compound events, and in NOA and the Pampas region for sequential ones. In general terms, all datasets show a good representation of the spatio‐temporal variability of hot and dry months. The insights of the influence of ENSO on compound events revealed that La Niña enhances the occurrences of hot and dry months throughout the study region, with the exception of NOA, where El Niño conditions promote the occurrence of these events. Based on logistic regression models, we successfully quantify the relationship between ENSO and hot and dry months and demonstrate that ENSO plays a significant role as a driver of compound hot and dry events in the central region, Cuyo, NEA and a portion of the Pampas. This research contributes to the understanding of compound events in Argentina and how they are influenced by major drivers of climate variability providing useful information for the development of a predictive system for such events.

Increasing vulnerability of vegetation to Meteorological and Groundwater drought: A Case study in Argentina

Study RegionContinental Argentina, South America. Study FocusThis study integrates multiple data sources to analyze the response of vegetation to meteorological and groundwater drought events in Argentina. It utilizes GRACE satellite data to monitor water storage variations, the GLDAS hydrological model to track soil moisture levels, and NDVI to assess vegetation health, categorized by different vegetation types. Meteorological data facilitated the computation of drought severity using the Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). Anomalies in groundwater storage, derived from these data, informed the calculation of the Grace Groundwater Drought Index (GGDI). A comprehensive statistical analysis was conducted to examine the impact of meteorological (SPEI) and groundwater (GGDI) droughts on various vegetation types. New Hydrological Insights for the RegionThe study reveals that from 2002 to 2022, GRACE-TWSA and GLDAS-TWSA displayed consistent trends in Argentina. Meteorological droughts, characterized by higher frequency and intensity, predominantly affect croplands and grasslands. Compared to lagged effects, the cumulative impact of droughts was found to be more significant. Shrublands demonstrated the greatest resistance to drought, whereas vegetation in humid regions showed lower drought tolerance. Notably, the duration associated with the lag effects of meteorological droughts decreased from 2.16 months in 2002–1.52 months in 2020, suggesting an increasing sensitivity of vegetation to these droughts. This underscores the urgency of developing targeted drought resilience and water resource management strategies.

Climate warming and chronic diseases burden: direct gradient between heat wave annual frequency and mortality by cerebrovascular events in Argentina

Climate warming and chronic diseases burden: direct gradient between heat wave annual frequency and mortality by cerebrovascular events in Argentina

The health, economic and social burden of smoking in Argentina, and the impact of increasing tobacco taxes in a context of illicit trade.

Tobacco tax increases, the most cost-effective measure in reducing consumption, remain underutilized in low and middle-income countries. This study estimates the health and economic burden of smoking in Argentina and forecasts the benefits of tobacco tax hikes, accounting for the potential effects of illicit trade. Using a probabilistic Markov microsimulation model, this study quantifies smoking-related deaths, health events, and societal costs. The model also estimates the health and economic benefits of different increases in the price of cigarettes through taxes. Annually, smoking causes 45,000 deaths and 221,000 health events in Argentina, costing USD 2782 million in direct medical expenses, USD 1470 million in labor productivity loss costs, and USD 1069 million in informal care costs-totaling 1.2% of the national gross domestic product. Even in a scenario that considers illicit trade of tobacco products, a 50% cigarette price increase through taxes could yield USD 8292 million in total economic benefits accumulated over a decade. Consequently, raising tobacco taxes could significantly reduce the health and economic burdens of smoking in Argentina while increasing fiscal revenue.

The power to control: State forces’ action and student contentious politics in the Argentine educational field

Student movements in Latin America have historically been at the forefront of democratization and progressive social action. This article seeks to understand state-led protest control against students and their movements in Argentina in the last decades (1997–2007). By drawing on a database of contentious politics events in Argentina using newspaper data, analysis of secondary sources, and in-depth interviews of actors, it closely examines when, why, where, and how the state contains student protests and how the power relations between them and the state unfolds over time. A main finding underlying this study is that the nature of state repression of students is related to (a) the tactics being used, (b) the demands being made, (c) the actors that are protesting alongside them, and (d) the political party in power. The article shows how the associational ties between students, teacher movements, political parties, and other movements change during moments of economic crisis and political shifts in government, and how this, in turn, results in changes in state control. Against common sense understandings, we find that changes toward more politically ‘progressive’ governments do not necessarily imply less amount of repression even though the nature of state control changes.

Anticipating the Flood. Community-based cartography for disaster flood events in Argentina

Abstract. “Anticipando la Crecida” Project (Anticipating the Flood) is an interdisciplinary project which deals with flood risk management strategies associated with intense rain events and southeasterly wind « sudestadas » in socio-economical vulnerable urban areas in Argentina. The objective of the current study is to use local knowledge through participatory activities to strengthen the phase of risk awareness of an early warning system by using cartography as a work tool. For this purpose, eleven workshops with adults and children were held between 2014 and 2017 in Buenos Aires metropolitan area and the towns of San Antonio de Areco and Santa Lucía.By helping communities articulate and communicate spatial knowledge through workshops, enable the possibility to advocate for a change. That change result in a new direction on how the community and stakeholders can act towards a flood event. Analysing community-based maps of 85 adults, flood theoretical models can be evaluated and perhaps improved. Additionally, overall 287 students between 10 and 17 years old learned about cartography and interacted with poster maps during the workshops held in different schools.

Mamíferos fósiles de la región de La Plata (Buenos Aires, Argentina), comentarios sobre la historia de sus hallazgos

La Plata, capital de la provincia de Buenos Aires y el Museo de Ciencias Naturales, inician su desarrollo al unísono. Los equipos de investigadores del Museo llevan a cabo una historia de aportes científicos en diversas áreas de las Ciencias Naturales, entre ellas la de la paleontología de vertebrados, que continúa hasta la actualidad. Muchos de esos aportes fueron generados por los hallazgos de fósiles en la llanura pampeana, donde se erigen la Ciudad y el Museo. En la presente contribución, se resumen los numerosos registros y su contexto estratigráfico. El autor participó en forma activa en muchos de ellos.

La clave Cortesi. La política vaticana en la República Argentina (1926-1936)

El gobierno de Filippo Cortesi como nuncio en Buenos Aires durante una década decisiva permite adentrarse en la visión que la curia pontificia tuvo del desarrollo de los acontecimientos en la Argentina de entreguerras y la aplicación de las diversas estrategias adoptadas en defensa de sus intereses. La documentación generada por la nunciatura y la Secretaría de Estado del Vaticano evidencia como las dinámicas internas de la república platense se vieron condicionadas por el complejo juego dialéctico atravesado por una corporación cada vez más centralizada y global.La política de Ralliement propiciada previamente por Benedicto XV y el obispo De Andrea, se vio reemplazada por la revolución conservadora de Pío XI, Pietro Gasparri y Vlodimir Ledochowsky, que apostaron por restaurar una alianza con las oligarquías en un contexto de crisis del liberalismo y emergencia de Estados autoritarios. El golpe del general Uriburu en septiembre de 1930 y el posterior gobierno del general Justo contaron con el apoyo del nuncio y su mayor aliado, Santiago Luis Copello, pronto designado arzobispo y encumbrado como cardenal. El Congreso Eucarístico Internacional celebrado en 1934 en Buenos Aires certificaría ante el cardenal Pacelli el éxito de aquella estrategia.

Not My Choice: Feeling as a “Productive Paradox” in Lola Arias’s Doble de riesgo

Framed within Buenos Aires’s Parque de la Memoria, Lola Arias’s 2016 multi-media installation, Doble de riesgo, thrust affect to center stage and highlighted choice as pivotal, emotionally driven, and necessary for individual and collective momentum. The images in Arias’s exhibit thus went beyond inspiring catharsis or compassion; they questioned the role of emotions in creating communities and matters of individual and national security. Using Ben Anderson’s concept of a “productive paradox,” this article shows how Arias seized on the diverse but potent affective aftermath of multiple political and historical events in Argentina, moving her viewers from contemplating individual emotions to participating in collective, affective bonding. This article also pays special attention to the many doubles in Doble de riesgo, examining how Arias expanded and destabilized the notion of the double by transforming its visual elements into trompe-l’oeil—thus highlighting the instability, power, and perpetual shifting of her subjects’ emotions—as well as examining the ways in which the exhibit’s interactive elements made visitors into simultaneous actors and emancipated spectators.

La investigación sobre el síndrome de burnout en latinoamérica entre 2000 y el 2010

The aim of this paper is to present the results of the systematic review of the research progress of burnout syndrome in Latin America. We reviewed 89 studies that have been published in scientific journals, books and reports of scientific events in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Dominican Republic and Venezuela, from 2000 year; a high percentage of research methodological approaches used in the conceptual approaches and the instrument developed by Maslach and Jackson, followed by Peter Gil -Monte. The designs of the research are descriptive - correlations. Some research conducted validation of instruments, mostly in caring professions. Using theories and testing methods created in 'developed', industrialized countries without reflection on the specificity of their own work processes of Latin American context becomes evident.

FUZZY SIMILARITY AND COUNTERFACTUALS IN THE ASSESSMENT OF DEFAULT RISK: THE EUROZONE CRISIS AND THE ARGENTINEAN SOLUTION

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1. INTRODUCTIONThe events that followed the 2008 financial crisis have shown that countries believed to be shielded against financial turmoil were much frailer than thought. Since then numerous voices pointed out the resemblance of the situation in the most challenged countries of the Eurozone with Argentina in 2001 [4][5][10][15a]. As it is well known, the convertibility of the Argentinean peso allowed the banks to carry dollar-nominated accounts, making their balance sheets susceptible to financial fragility at rapid exchange rate changes. While the latter were forbidden by law, the current account deficits and the increasing difficulties to pay back external obligations ended up forcing a default of the debt and a sharp and disordered devaluation of the currency. These events seemed, at the beginning, a source of endless mishaps but ended up (together with a rapid improvement of the international prices of Argentinean exports) creating the conditions for a fast rebound of the Argentinean economy [5] [9] [15a].It is no wonder then than a chorus of experts in various fields started recommending Greece (and eventually other EU members) to follow the Argentinean path [4] [5] [10] [14] [15a] [17] [18]. These arguments, based on rough analogies, deserve a closer analysis, which we intend to carry out in this paper. While this macroeconomic scenario has been analysed once and again in the macroeconomic literature (as well as by pundits and politicians), since the basis of comparison is a single case a strong justification in needed for making this assessment. Helmer and Rescher's ([13]) provide, fortunately, a sound foundation for such procedure. A counterfactual analysis based on the similarity of the two cases is the key. We focus here on such an exercise. To wit: are really the troubled euro-economies and 2001 Argentina so similar? And, if so, to what extent should be expect them to default on their debt and abandon the euro, as seen in the perspective of the 2001 devaluation of the peso? The answers to these questions require the formulation of an appropriate notion of similarity among economies and the exploration of means to infer future events out from analogies.The approach to be followed in this paper consists in applying Zadeh's ([25]) notion of fuzzy similarity to the comparison of the economic status of different nations. This formalization is intended to capture similarities among crisp objects. Nevertheless it is based on degrees of membership to sets of objects, namely those that satisfy some rather imprecisely defined (i.e. fuzzy) properties. While other approaches to similarity have been explored in the literature (e.g. [1] [2] [3] [8] [21] [24]) ours provides the right combination of soundness and simplicity required by the particular problem at hand. We find that 2001 Argentina and the troubled Eurozone countries belong to a common (fuzzy) equivalence class. From this we will draw the degree of possibility to be assigned to a devaluation and change of currency in the light of the events in Argentina a decade and a half ago.The plan of the paper is as follows. In section 2 we will provide a conventional account of the current economic situation in some European countries and 2001 Argentina. In section 3 we will discuss the epistemological justification for counterfactual analyses and the conditions under which they can be performed. In section 4 we introduce a version of fuzzy similarity and its application to the evaluation of future consequences in similar situations. In section 5 we apply it to the comparison of the aforementioned economies and draw conclusions for the Eurozone. Finally, section 6 concludes.2. CRISATVIA AND ARGENTINAThe pervasiveness of systemic risk and fragility in some Eurozone economies forces a comparison with the crises in emergent countries at the end of the 1990s and particularly with the end of the convertibility regime in Argentina. …

Abstract P363: Evaluation of Health and Economic Impact of the Current Policy to Eliminate Industrial Trans Fats from Processed Foods in Argentina by 2014

Objectives: Industrial trans fatty acids (TFA) increase CHD risk, but use remains high in developing nations. From 2004-2014, Argentina initiated policies to reduce industrial TFA: voluntary agreements with industry in 2004, mandatory labeling in 2006, and elimination by Food Code by 2014. We aimed to evaluate the policy’s impact on CHD, DALYs and costs. Methods: A review of diet trials, local studies, and consultations with experts was performed to estimate baseline TFA intake in 2004 and types of replacements used by industry from 2004-2014. We built an epidemiological simulation model calculating 3 scenarios to estimate effects of isocaloric replacement of TFA with alternative fats/oils, based on (1) changes in the total:HDL-C ratio (Δ TC/HDL) and (2) changes in other risk biomarkers, and the predicted effects of these biomarker changes on CHD; and (3) observed associations of TFA which CHD events in prospective studies, which may better account for pleiotrophic effects. We used Framingham risk equations to estimate first CHD events with vs. without the policy according to individual age-sex-risk factor distributions (including ΔTC/HDL), utilizing an Argentine population-based sample of 4,000 adults weighted to the full population. Results: After 2014, this policy would prevent each year from 1.3% (based on Δ TC/HDL only; to 7.4% (based on pleiotrophic effects) of all CHD events in Argentina (Table). Accounting for intervention costs and averted events, the policy is actually cost-saving. Conclusions: This is the first model evaluating the impact of an actual policy for eliminating TFA in a developing country. Given the 165,000 annual CHD events in Argentina, at an annual incidence rate of almost 1% in adults, near elimination of industrial TFA might avert under the most conservative assumptions, 1.3% of CHD and saved $36 million. In other low-resource settings, where TFA intake is higher, these effects could be larger. Our findings inform policy makers in Argentina and other developing countries on the huge impact of this policy

Transformations and crisis of liberalism in Argentina, 1930-1955

In this original study, Jorge A. Nallim chronicles the decline of liberalism in Argentina during the volatile period between two military coups the 1930 overthrow ofHipolito Yrigoyen and the deposing of Juan Peron in 1955. While historians have primarily focused on liberalism in economic or political contexts, Nallim instead documents a wide range of locations where liberalism was claimed and ultimately marginalized in the pursuit of individual agendas. Nallim shows how concepts of liberalism were espoused by various groups who invented traditions to legitimatize their methods of political, religious, class, intellectual, or cultural hegemony. In these deeply fractured and corrupt processes, liberalism lost political favor and alienated the public. These events also set the table for Peronism and stifled the future of progressive liberalism in Argentina. Nallim describes the main political parties of the period and deconstructs their liberal discourses. He also examines major cultural institutions and shows how each attached liberalism to their cause. Nallim compares and contrasts the events in Argentina to those in other Latin American nations and reveals their links to international developments. While critics have positioned the rhetoric of liberalism during this period as one of decadence or irrelevance, Nallim instead shows it to be a vital and complex factor in the metamorphosis of modern history in Argentina and Latin America as well.

Self-fulfilling crises with default and devaluation

We characterize optimal debt policy in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of defaults and devaluations in which self-fulfilling crises can arise. When the government cannot commit to repay its debt and cannot commit to maintain the exchange rate, consumers’ expectations of devaluation make the safe level of government debt very low. We show that, when the debt is in the crises zone—where self-fulfilling crisis can occur—the government finds it optimal to reduce the debt to exit the zone. The lower the probability that consumers assign to devaluation, however, the greater is the number of periods that the government will choose to take to exit the crisis zone. We argue that our model can help understand events in Argentina in 2001–2002 and throw light on some aspects of the current EMU sovereign debt crisis.

Closures and Openings in the Impasse

What lies beyond neoliberalism? This essay proposes to examine this question within the effects of those struggles that, through the creation of collective spaces, significantly contributed to delegitimizing neoliberalism and breaking its hegemony. In Argentina, ten years after the original crisis of neoliberal order, this discussion remains at a boiling point. Does neoliberalism live on in new forms? Can those same people who put its legitimacy into question propose a different order? What can we call this current phase, which, since 2003 has been filled with fluctuations between “closures” and “openings” and is now characterized by a government that aims to merely administer over the situation that has resulted from the crisis of neoliberalism? Here, Colectivo Situaciones does not attempt to answer these questions (which still remain open) but rather proposes to read the last decade of events in Argentina and Latin America from the perspective of the effects of the movement on the current situation. As this essay attempts to show, this moment is marked by an ambivalent dynamic in which novelties and archaisms stand juxtaposed in a situation best characterized as an “impasse.” This process seems to close and reopen in each new phase, requiring a continuous new art of questioning that will subtly construct a path to take us deeper into the limitations and potentialities of this situation.

Protest events in international press coverage: An empirical critique of cross-national conflict databases

The empirical analysis of protest events and other expressions of social conflict is one of the core tasks of the discipline of comparative sociology. The numerous international data sets and empirical country comparisons that rely exclusively on reporting in English-language newspapers such as The New York Times in surveying protest events nevertheless suffer from considerable distortions. Using the example of some 1800 protest events in Argentina, Mexico and Paraguay in the year 2006, the present study shows that there are remarkable differences between national and international (English-language) newspapers when it comes to frequency of reporting. On the one hand, a mere 5.3 percent of all protest events that are reported nationally also attract the attention of the international press. On the other hand, the percentage of international reporting depends considerably and to a statistically significant extent on the country in which the protest takes place. Besides, these country differences persist when additional protest characteristics (e.g. the number of participants, the participation of renowned personalities and the escalation of the protest into rioting) are controlled by means of multivariate logistic regressions. The measurement error that results when surveying protest events on the strength of coverage in the English-language international press is therefore not constant across countries. The frequently used data sets like the World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators or the Cross-National Time Series Data Archive launched by Arthur Banks are thus proving to be highly questionable sources for international comparisons in protest and conflict research.

Determination of the Frequency and Direct Cost of the Adverse Drug Events in Argentina

To determine the frequency and the direct costs of adverse drug reactions, in an ambulatory population of the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina and its area of influence. A retrospective study was done during a period of three months on approximately 300.000 residents of the Buenos Aires area, gathering data according to the selected variables by means of the electronic capture of prescriptions dispensed in pharmacies of the area. This method enables the detection and registration of potential conflicts that may arise between a prescribed drug and factors such as: patient's demographic, clinical and drug profile. The analysis unit was defined as the happening of a moderate or severe adverse event reported by the system. The selected variables were the incidence of these effects and the direct cost was calculated as the value of the drugs that induced the adverse event. The events were classified according to the following interactions: a) drug-drug, b) drug-pediatrics, c) drug-gender, d) drug-pregnancy and abuse of controlled substances. The observed frequency shows great variability and the shortage of available data for ambulatory populations. We found 6.74% of reported events over the total of processed items, which generated an additional cost equivalent to 4.58% of the total pharmaceutical expenses. This study has only evaluated the cost occurred by the use of a drug that will lead to an adverse reaction. Moderate and severe reactions were included regardless of the important indirect costs, hospitalization costs, tests, physician fees, etc.

Observed Changes in Return Values of Annual Temperature Extremes over Argentina

Abstract Extreme temperature events are one of the most studied extreme events since their occurrence has a huge impact on society. In this study, the frequency of occurrence of absolute extreme temperature events in Argentina is analyzed. Four annual extremes are defined based on minimum and maximum daily data: the highest maximum (minimum) temperature of the year, and the lowest maximum (minimum) temperature of the year. Applying the extreme value theory (EVT), a generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution is fitted to these extreme indices and return values are calculated for the period 1956–2003. Its spatial distribution indicates that, for warm extremes, maximum temperature (Tx) is expected to be greater than 32°C at least once every 100 yr throughout the country (reaching values even higher than 46°C in the central region), while minimum temperature (Tn) is expected to exceed 16°C (reaching 30°C in the central and northern regions). Cold annual extremes show larger gradients across the country, with Tx being lower than 8°C at least once every 100 yr, and Tn lower than 0°C every 2 yr, with values even less than −10°C in the southwestern part of the country. However, the frequency of occurrence of climatic extremes has changed throughout the globe during the twentieth century. Changes in return values of annual temperature extremes due to the 1976–77 climatic shift at six long-term datasets are then analyzed. The lowest Tx of the year is the variable in which the 1976–77 shift is less noticeable. At all the stations studied there is a decrease in the probability of occurrence of the highest Tx if the study is based on more recent records, while the frequency of occurrence of the highest Tn increases at some stations and decreases at others. This implies that in the “present climate” (after 1977) there is a greater frequency of occurrence of high values of Tn at Observatorio Central Buenos Aires and Río Gallegos together with a lower frequency of occurrence of high values of Tx, leading to a decrease in the annual temperature range. The most noticeable change in return values due to the 1976–77 shift is seen in Patagonia where the 10-yr return value for the highest Tn increases from 13.7°C before 1976 to 18.6°C after 1977. That is, values of the highest Tn that occurred at least once every 10 yr in the “past climate” (before 1976) now happened more than once every 2 yr.

Patterns leading to extreme events in Argentina: partial and generalized frosts

AbstractThis paper studies the atmospheric circulation associated with frosts in the central region of Argentina with the objective of improving the prediction capacity for these events. Frosts are selected according to a spatial principle, which takes into consideration those events affecting an area above 25% of the weather stations located in the region known as Wet Pampas. Partial frosts (PF, less than 75% of the stations) and generalized frosts (GF, above 75% of the stations) constitute two different groups: one of them given by PF + GF and the other one only by the PFs. The analysis comprises the period between 1961 and 1990, where two extremes are selected: those years with a number of frosts one standard deviation above and below the mean (+σ and − σ respectively). In each extreme group (i.e. PF + GF + σ and − σ; PF + σ and − σ), the average number of frosts varies according to the different periods of the year. Therefore, the following periods—selected independently—are studied: Annual of frosts (from April through October), seasonal (from May through September and from June through August), and each of the involved months individually.The mean circulation patterns analyzed from the composites of different meteorological variables explain the temperature anomalies observed in the region under study. In this way, the extreme occurrence of frosts is a result of the prevailing circulation during the different periods under consideration. Within each group (PF + GF and PF), the composites of the extremes + σ and − σ show opposite anomaly patterns for the different periods. Results for + σ(−σ) are distinguished by negative (positive) temperature and humidity anomalies in the Wet Pampas for the composites of PF + GF and PF. At low levels, the wind anomalies show the prevalence of winds from the south (north) in the southern section of the continent. At upper levels, this pattern is accompanied by anomalies of the prevailing westerly (easterly) wind for PF + GF and PF. This means a subtropical jet over South America more (less) intense than normal is associated with a higher (lower) frequency of frost occurrence in the seasonal composites and the Annual.However, there are variations in wind anomalies at 250 hPa within the same extreme + σ(−σ) when comparing the groups' PF with the previously studied group (formed only by the GF). Composites of group GF + σ showed a maximum anomaly of the westerly zonal wind located at the jet entrance region into South America, over the Andes. On the other hand, the composites for PF + σ show a component from the northwest located leeward the Andes, extending toward the southeast up to the Atlantic Ocean. The same anomaly for the extreme − σ extends from the north of Argentina up to tropical latitudes, and it is more intense for groups PF + GF and PF than for group GF.Additionally, an analysis of the daily evolution of PF events during winters' GF + σ shows that the PFs are caused by a cyclonic anomaly moving toward the east of the continent, causing cold air advection from the south. The same analysis for the GFs shows an anticyclonic anomaly dominating the southern area of South America, i.e. the anticyclogenesis that causes the GFs does not occur in the PFs. Copyright © 2007 Royal Meteorological Society

Variation in the Perceived Passage of Time: A Cross-National Study

Flaherty's cross-cultural theory purports to account for variation in the perceived passage of time. Recent events in Argentina provide an opportunity to assess the applicability of this theory to a Latin American nation. We conducted interviews with 198 persons who participated in various kinds of political activism. The respondents who felt that time had passed “quickly” emphasized an increase in governmental and personal activity. For those who said “slowly,” the focus was on suffering, unpleasant emotions, and waiting. Those who were unable to specify reported a mixture of factors associated with “quickly” or “slowly,” while those who said “synchronically” were unaffected by the turmoil in their country. These findings offer strong support for the theory in question, and they suggest that variation in the experience of time occurs not because there are different kinds of people but because people find themselves in different kinds of circumstances.