Local Affiliation Research Articles

Government affiliation, analyst behavior and the economic consequences

AbstractA significant number of regional brokerage firms in China are owned by their respective local governments. We use this context to examine how local government affiliation affects brokerage firms’ research activities. Using a sample of analyst reports from 2013 to 2021, we find that analysts working at local government‐affiliated brokerage firms are more likely to cover firms within the local government's jurisdiction than non‐affiliated analysts. Local government‐affiliated analysts enjoy an information advantage, as evidenced by the issuance of more accurate earnings forecasts for local firms, compared to those of non‐affiliated analysts. The effect is stronger for local firms with lower information quality. Additionally, local government‐affiliated analysts show more optimism in stock recommendations, but not in earnings forecasts, for local firms, compared to non‐affiliated analysts. The effect is more pronounced for local firms that receive more local government subsidies, operate in regions with greater local government intervention or during the COVID‐19 pandemic and the National Congress conferences, and require more capital market support. The results of this study advance our understanding of the key determinants of analyst performance and provide new evidence in the debate on the role of government intervention in financial institutions.

Wspólnota dźwięków – wspólnotą kultury. Dźwięk w sytuacjach społecznych

This paper proposes a look at the community of culture from the viewpoint of the community of sounds, which is its immanent part. The sound environment is a significant element which builds a feeling of national, local, group, generational, and other affiliation and identity. Sounds may function as symbols, be a part of rituals, and carry values. Treating the audiosphere as an indicator of a community opens us to a new dimension of reflecting on the meaning of the sound landscape, understood, after R. M. Schafer, as the whole or a part of the sound environment with its perceptual, social, and historical-social context. Sound is the reflection of social organization systems created by people; therefore, social changes are reflected in the sound environment. In the analysis of this issue, I have used field recordings and their descriptions made by pedagogy students from the University of Lodz. The students’ observations confirm that it is worth reflecting on the sound in the ocularcentric world, which seems more than before dominated by sight, considered a sense of distancing by Wolfgang Welsch.

Indigenous Education System and Environmental Conservation Initiatives for Sustainable Development: Experiences from Nyamwezi in Uyui District, Tanzania

For centuries, African communities in their localities have co-existed with their natural environment in a harmonious manner leading to sustainability of both, the humans and the natural resources base. This co-existence is enabled by what is referred to as the indigenous environmental knowledge system. Indigenous knowledge has always been transferred from one generation to the next through norms, stories and cultural practices. This paper explores Indigenous Education systems and their implications to the conservation practices of the environment in Uyui district in Tabora region. The paper dwells on both primary and secondary data to provide insights on how Indigenous Education Systems embedded with traditional, initiation and local religious affiliation, have been used since time immemorial as one of the indirect initiatives of preserving, protecting and managing natural catchment forests. Random, Snowball and purposive sampling techniques were used to get a total of 120 respondents for this study. The study revealed that local communities in Uyui district have their system of knowledge affiliated with traditions, rituals and taboos which have been used to protect environmental and natural resources since the pre-colonial era up to the post-colonial epoch in Tanzania. The majority of respondents argue that the indigenous knowledge system was practical in protecting the natural resources in the local areas as it was embedded in the taboos, traditional rituals and religious beliefs. Failure or abandonment of the indigenous traditions has led to mismanagement of forest resources and other natural resources. The paper recommends both local and central government incorporate Indigenous knowledge and experiences in their endeavors of protecting and preserving the Environment in Uyui district in Tabora region for sake of sustainable development in Tanzania.

Coaching Today's auditors: What causes reviewers to adopt a more developmental approach?

Audit workpaper review is a quality control mechanism intended to detect preparer errors and professionally develop preparers. In this study, we experimentally investigate two factors that theory predicts affect the degree to which audit reviewers adopt a developmental approach: local versus international preparer office affiliation and likely versus unlikely preparer recurrence. We find that reviewers adopt a less developmental approach for international preparers but a more developmental approach for preparers likely to recur. The adoption of a more developmental approach not only results in more coaching via review comments but is associated with greater detection of seeded preparer errors. Taken together, our findings highlight the susceptibility of quality control efforts in the global audit environment and identify recurrence as a potential intervention.

Becoming a Chinese football fan: an examination of the influence of national and local identities on the development of Chinese football fandom

ABSTRACT The article explores how national and local identities influence Chinese football fandom. Previous research has failed to provide detailed analysis about how these two social identities influence the process of fans’ self-identification. This study uses fans of Henan Jianye Football Club and Shenzhen Football Club because they can typically represent native and internal immigrant fans in China as examples to fill the knowledge gap. By combining the experiences of these two fan groups, the article reveals that international games and the feeling of supporting the nation can strengthen the influence of national identity on fandom for the national football team. It also reveals that fans’ recognition of their teams’ local symbolic status stimulates local identity in developing native fans’ support for local football clubs. Although internal immigrant fans do not share their local identities, their desire to acquire local affiliation also allows local identity to affect their fandom.

Translingual Practices in the Linguistic Landscape in the Western Region of Kazakhstan

In spite of the sharp rise of research interest in linguistic landscapes worldwide, little attention has been given to the multilingual urban discourse of Kazakhstan. Being first in the investigation into the multilingual practices characteristic of the linguistic landscape in the western region of Kazakhstan, our study adds to the number of linguistic landscape analyses through a translanguaging lens. This paper explores translingual practices on local "bottom-up" commercial public signs by the example of four major cities in the region: Aktau, Aktobe, Atyrau and Uralsk. The study uses a mixed method research design combining qualitative and quantitative analysis of multilingual urban texts accompanied by semi-structured ethnographic interviews with owners of commercial establishments. In our analysis, we specify various dynamic and creative forms of mixing the state Kazakh, interethnic Russian, international English and/or other local languages such as Uzbek and Arabic. We demonstrate how these languages are involved in the creation of symbolic meanings and attraction of potential consumers and contribute to the construction of the urban space of the western region of Kazakhstan. We provide illustrations of the ever-growing presence of English in multilingual written urban texts of the region as a symbol of modernity, high quality, innovation, technical progress and prestige. We also show the indexical potential of the Kazakh and Russian languages as markers of local affiliation and tradition, and the Uzbek and Arabic languages as symbols of the Turkic and Islamic cultures.

Citizen of Nowhere? Cosmopolitanism, Liberalism and Local Affiliation in Oliver Goldsmith

In the wake of the era of Trump and Brexit, legacies and values of European Enlightenment seem under threat as never before. Cosmopolitanism in particular, generally understood as an Enlightenment virtue, has come to be associated with a sort of rootlessness, and has not, as generally understood, valued local affiliation. For David Goodhart, writing in 2017, this characteristic has resulted in a polarisation between “anywheres” (liberal middle-class cosmopolitans) and “somewheres” (broadly speaking, conservative working-class voters who have strong attachments to their nation and places of origin). An Irish Tory monarchist who sought in his poem The Deserted Village (1770) to defend rural communities from the ravages of economic modernity, Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74) was also in other key works a cosmopolitan commentator who compared countries in order to warn Britain against the dangers of economic liberalism, as he did in The Traveller, or a Prospect of Society (1764). Thus, he could be thought of as a more conservative cosmopolitan than many of his British and French peers; as such his particular enlightenment legacy is his example of a middle ground between the “anywheres” and “somewheres” of Goodhart’s thesis.

The World of Traditional Healers: A Study on the Dimasas of Dima Hasao District, Assam

Based on basic ideas validated by community culture, traditional healing is thought to be the most ancient type of organized approach to healing activities. A scientific platform has long been established to discover the wealth of remedies for various ailments, taking into account the pharmacological actions of different ingredients through corresponding endeavors by qualified and specialized individuals in each community. The residents of the community professionally administer care utilizing plant, animal, and mineral materials in accordance with widely accepted sociocultural knowledge and attitudes towards the tri-polar concept of Body, Mind and Soul in relation to health. The traditional healers were well expertise to diagnose the conditions of their patients, administer medications, and heal their ailments. This study centers on the functions that traditional healers play in a tiny frontier tribal group, taking into account their local affiliation and the ways in which the respective population adapts through conventional healing.

The Revival of Religion in Albania

This paper examines the recent history of religious development in Albania during the post-communist period. Second, it identifies patterns in the differentiated development of material and spiritual religious life among the region’s religions, and the institutional and political reasons behind them. Third, it analyses the positions of Albanian Cham, Albanian Kosovar and Bosniak Sunni communities as they confront the post-communist pressures of proselytisation and de-Sunnification. Through historical and discourse analysis and unstructured interviews with individuals of different religious, ethnic and local affiliation, the paper reveals that religious, ethnic and local feelings are strong among all three communities. Attitudes toward proselytization attempts among Bosniaks, Cham and Kosovar Albanians, however, are more resilient than those of local Sunnis toward de-Sunnification. The weakening of religiosity among local Sunnis is in conjunction with an organised movement to construct a distinct Bektashi identity, although most Bektashis still identify as Muslim.

Exploring the Nature of Authority Over, and Ownership of Data Generated by Archaeological Lidar Projects in Latin America

Data ownership and accessibility are critical issues across academia, but especially in fields that touch upon digital heritage that relates to pre-colonial/colonial societies. Who can access spatial datasets about pre-colonial landscapes, who is writing about these topics, and who, by extension, is considered an authority on these topics? This paper explores data ownership, gender, and local affiliation by examining publications on archaeological lidar in Latin America between 2011 and 2021. For over 10 years, archaeological remote sensing derived from lidar has transformed research in Latin America and especially in Mesoamerica, yet there are numerous issues related to data ownership and authoritative voice that remain unresolved. This study shows that publication authorship, including first and co-authorship, is dominated by male researchers at US institutions while women and individuals associated with institutions in Latin America are poorly represented. The limited representation of authors with local or community affiliations suggests that local authoritative voices are largely muted in archaeological lidar research in the region. We discuss working toward more collaborative lidar research in Latin America.

Drivers predicting biodiversity and community assembly of benthic diatoms in a karst spring environment

Geographical location, landscape heterogeneity, and their position at the edge of Quaternary glaciations are the major reasons why the river basins of the Western Carpathians are of the utmost importance for research on European aquatic biodiversity. Moreover, unlike streams, springs have several features determining their insularity in the river continuum. This study aimed to uncover the mechanism forming the diatom assemblages in the karst springs environment, using a two-dimensional approach, including taxonomic and trait data. Thus, (1) the congruence between observed and expected values of null models of taxonomic/functional diversity and functional dispersion and (2) Generalized mixed models and Variation partitioning were used to assess how taxonomic/functional diversity and composition were associated with the local conditions, regional affiliation and spatial springs distance. In 64 rheocrene karst springs (10 karst mountain ranges) of the Western Carpathians, 138 epilithic diatom taxa were found. Null model analyses did not uncover any clear evidence of non-random events forming the spring diatom community. Although, the observed functional diversity did not differ from the null model for most springs, most observed values were lower than the mean value of the null model, suggesting that, except for random events, environmental filtering was an important driver of community assembly. Substratum type, spring connectivity and phosphorus concentration drove the value of taxonomic richness, whereas functional diversity was controlled by silica and bicarbonate concentration as well as spring size. In both models, affiliation to the mountain range (defined as a random factor) was significant. The Variation Partitioning Analysis showed that diatom assemblage composition was mainly determined by local and regional environmental conditions, whilst the distance between springs had only a weak influence.

The Influences of Political Affiliation and Weather-Related Impacts on Climate Change Adaptation in U.S. Cities

Abstract This study examines the influences of state and local political affiliation and local exposure to weather-related impacts on local government climate change adaptation efforts in 88 U.S. cities. Although climate adaptation takes place when cities replace critical infrastructure damaged by severe weather events, little is known about the influence of political affiliation and severe weather events on climate adaptation in a broader sense. Using multiple linear regression models, this study analyzes variations in local government climate adaptation efforts as a function of local gross domestic product (as a control variable), historical weather-related factors [i.e., number of extreme weather events, weather-related economic impact due to property damage, and weather-related human impact (injuries and fatalities)], and state and local political affiliation. The findings of this study indicate that local political affiliation significantly influences local government climate adaptation efforts; however, state political affiliation does not. Further, local weather-related impacts do not appear to affect the likelihood of local government to engage in climate adaptation efforts, even when accounting for potential interactions with local political affiliation. These results support the hypothesis that local political affiliation is a strong and robust predictor of local climate adaptation in U.S. cities. This study contributes to literature aimed at addressing the widely acknowledged need for understanding key barriers to U.S. climate adaptation, as well as the role of politics in moderating climate action.

Bound to the Land: Cove Fort in Kesler Family History and Memory

Bound to the Land: Cove Fort in Kesler Family History and Memory

Inequalities in diabetes type 2 prevalence in the multicultural city Malmö, Sweden

Abstract Background Type-2 diabetes is a progressive disease and very much linked to health equity prerequisites and poverty. Its long-term complications include cardiovascular diseases, blindness, amputation and kidney failure. The aim of the study was to explore diabetes type 2 (T2D) prevalence in Malmö, a socioeconomically diverse and multicultural city with a relatively young population. Methods The study is a part of the Cities Changing Diabetes project related to the 14 geographical developing areas CTC (Community That Care) in Malmö. The whole city has been divided into 14 areas based on socioeconomical homogeneity as well as shared local area affiliation. Results are obtained from the Patient Administrative System (ICD E11 code) in regional health care as well as from Statistics Sweden. Results The prevalence of T2D was 4.3% in 2018. It has increased since 2011 mostly noticeable for residents between 18 and 64 years of age. There are considerable differences in T2D prevalence by CTC-areas where the highest observed prevalence rate was 6.4% and the lowest was 2.6%. The areas with the lower prevalence rates have a high level of education as well as high average household income. The opposite is observed in the areas with the highest prevalence rates where the residents have lower educational level as well as low average income. Two of the three CTC-areas with the highest T2D prevalence rates consists of a younger population as compared to the city in general whereas the third consists of the oldest population in the city. Conclusions The prevalence of T2D has increased during the last decade in Malmö. There are significant differences in T2D prevalence within the city related to contextual and socioeconomic factors. The highest T2D prevalence occurs in the area with the lower income and lower level of education. Key messages Promotive actions need to be specifically targeted at younger populations in the city of Malmö to prevent the increase in type-2 diabetes and its complications. Contextual factors need to be taken into consideration in the development of sustainable primary and secondary preventive actions for type-2 diabetes in community care and the health care system.

Developing Paradigms, Patterns, and Mechanisms for Science Teachers’ Professional Development in Area-Based Networks in Thailand

The main purpose of this research was to develop a paradigm, pattern, and mechanism for the professional development of science teachers in area networks that was consistent with the needs of educational institutions according to the key priority agenda for development. The target groups used in this study were teacher production institutions and educational institutions in the northeastern region of Thailand. Research tools included data collection forms and questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed by standard statistical methods, including frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, priority need index (PNI), and content analysis. The results revealed that the paradigm, pattern, and mechanism for science teachers’ professional development found in the northeastern area–based networks of Thailand were individual-based development (ID), spiral patterns (SP), and multiple networks (MN). Individual-based development was a new paradigm of professional development that emphasized the driving force and quality from within by progressive and individualized programs using students’ outcome-based development. The spiral pattern was a professional development model emphasizing self-paced learning with diversity and an integrated model through blended, action-based learning, both on-the-job training and off-the-job training, using coaching and mentoring from the teacher production institution in the area. The multiple networks were a professional development mechanism cooperating and supported by a school, university, private sector, and local and national affiliation using school-based development. The way forward is to form a professional learning community using a cooperation network in a school which acts as a mechanism to drive policies for cooperative practice. Recommendations are offered as a result of this study. The results revealed that the paradigm, pattern, and mechanism for science teachers’ professional development found in the northeastern area–based networks of Thailand were individual-based development (ID), spiral patterns (PS), and multiple networks (MN). Individual-based development was a new paradigm of professional development that emphasized the driving force and quality from within by progressive and individualized programs using students’ outcome-based development. The spiral pattern was a professional development model emphasizing self-paced learning with diversity and an integrated model through blended, action-based learning, both on-the-job training and off-the-job training, using coaching and mentoring from the teacher production institution in the area. The multiple networks were a professional development mechanism cooperating and supported by a school, university, private sector, and local and national affiliation using school-based development.

Back to the future: Rewriting fashion history from the Cook Islands

This article engages in debates about the European and capitalist origins of the fashion system and aims to decentre this history from a Pacific perspective. Taking fashion to be a process of novel and transformative display, the article reconstructs a Pacific fashion system that innovatively presents local aesthetics, status and affiliation and re-presents social, economic and political identities and agendas. It examines present-day and historical accounts of clothing and dress in the Cook Islands, starting from a shirt described in 1896; it then tracks forward to contemporary logo T-shirts and back again to suggest an alternate fashion trajectory of bodily self-representation, collective display and distinction. Fashion emerges as an anticipatory social force that produces a multiplicity of meanings that move unpredictably across time, place and systems of representation.

Haugerudbekken: Community Improvement through Socially Engaged Art

Haugerudbekken is the collective title of a series of art projects where two local artists (the authors of this article) collaborate with pupils from local schools in Haugerud to create public art installations in the neighbourhood. Haugerudbekken may be considered a practical exploration guided by principles in the fields of socially engaged art (SEA), teaching artists (TA) and community artists (CA). The project is being undertaken within the broader context of a government run local improvement initiative in the Oslo suburbs of Haugerud and Trosterud. A growing demand for art entering a societal context (like urban development) calls for approaches emphasizing dialogue, communication and local affiliation. As this demand grows, so does the need for best-practice guidance for initiating artists as well as for policymakers and others inviting artists to contribute. Furthermore, our approach as independent artists working within a community setting might also benefit from clarification of theory and framework in this field. This article therefore aims to share knowledge gathered through our three years (and still ongoing) working on Haugerudbekken, pinpointing what we believe to be key success factors as well as challenges in our project. Findings are discussed in relation to existing theory and relevant practice in SEA, TA and CA informing existing guidelines as well as terminology.

Writing Edessa into the Roman Empire*

The Syriac tradition presents an exceptional opportunity to investigate how the people of a late Roman frontier articulated local community affiliation against the backdrop of the larger Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. Over the last decade, Syrian/Syriac identity and Roman identity in late antique Syria-Mesopotamia have emerged as topics of increasing interest. In concentrating on ethnicity, however, studies of specifically local affiliations have generally left unexamined the other modes of group identification which may have been equally or more salient. This essay fills that gap by excavating non-ethnic means of constructing local and regional identity in three Syriac texts written in and about Edessa in the pivotal century around 500 CE: the Chronicle of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite, the Chronicle of Edessa (540), and Euphemia and the Goth. Across their differences in date and genre, these three texts demonstrate a convergent set of strategies for reconciling Edessa and its neighbors to the Roman Empire at large. Crucially, all three project notions of local belonging which focus not on ethnic markers but on particular places: in the first instance, on the city. Drawing from cultural geography’s interdependent concept of “place,” the essay shows how in these texts local identity emerges from the interaction of city, church, and empire; Edessa’s connections to the wider Roman world serve not to negate but to articulate its specificity as a community. Moreover, such place-based means of identification could be extended to frame larger regional communities too, as Ps.-Joshua does in its most distinctive moments.

Мифологическая лексика в формулах устрашения детей (на материале говоров Тамбовской области)

We analyze the layer of mythological vocabulary of Tambov patois that functions in the structure of formulas for intimidating children as communicative type texts, related to the sphere of traditional spiritual culture. We identify the structure features of such texts; composition of in-timidating characters; features of their lexical expression, portrait characteristics (local affiliation, presence of hair, body pathologies) and harmful functions. Mythological characters, serving as in-timidators, are deprived most of semantic features; the reduction of such names initial semantics can be compensated by the ideophonic features of these characters' nominations; the uncertainty of characters' appearance for intimidating children determines the inclusion in this set of subjects; the prevalence of folk pedagogical methods of intimidation is associated with the role played by fear and fright in the culture of childhood. For traditional culture bearers, intimidation can be recognized as a significant element of folk pedagogy, since it functioned not only on the verbal, but also on the actional levels.

Hermann Broch und Der Brenner ed. by Paul Michael Lützeler and Markus Ender

Reviewed by: Hermann Broch und Der Brenner ed. by Paul Michael Lützeler and Markus Ender Vincent Kling Paul Michael Lützeler and Markus Ender, eds., Hermann Broch und Der Brenner. Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2020. 297 pp. European scholarly publishers generally receive more ample subsidies than their American counterparts, enabling them to provide more specific studies than US houses dare attempt. Paul Michael Lützeler and Markus Ender's [End Page 149] Hermann Broch und Der Brenner, an apt example, records the proceedings of a conference from June 2019 at the University of Innsbruck. The topic is relevant to its venue in focusing on relations between Broch and the Innsbruck periodical Der Brenner, the archive of which is logically housed at the university in that city. This volume may at first appear narrow in treating with fullness and clarity a topic based on a local affiliation, but it is far from provincial. After all, Innsbruck has played a more prominent role in Austrian belles lettres than the size of the city would suggest and continues to this day as a vibrant center of literary creativity and research. More specifically, the essence of Broch's intellectual and literary life is its universal reach, obviating any suggestion of insularity. Hannah Arendt aptly called Broch a "Dichter wider Willen" for his rejection of aesthetics when not united with ethics, his refusal to discuss rights without corresponding responsibilities, and his prodigious efforts to unite history, psychology, philosophy, and political science into a single unified vision. In light of Broch's catholicity, a volume dedicated "only" to his relations with a specific journal ranges farther than its apparently limited topic might indicate. Accordingly, Lützeler's introductory essay, "Hermann Brochs Der Tod des Vergil im Kontext von Europa- und Ethik-Diskurs" (9–24), establishes, in addition to his "Vorwort" (7–8), three broad contexts by touching on the tendency of fiction writers to work through problems of stabilizing collective identity and cultural memory with a view toward imagining—and thereby activating—a better future (9). The second part traces the expansion of Broch's ethical concepts through Theodor Haecker's concept of Virgil as an "anima naturaliter Christiana," allowing Broch to strengthen the link between Virgil and Dante and to explore contemporary topics of exile and persecution through that lens (13-16). The third part, "Tod, Ruhm und Unsterblichkeit," presents Broch's characteristic alignment of immortality with self-recognition: "Gott ist gleichsam die Totalerkenntnis, und menschlich-partielle Durchbrüche bedeuten für den erkennenden Menschen eine Annäherung an Gott und seine Ewigkeit" (19). Lützeler sets the direction for every other essay. Co-editor Markus Ender provides a provocative study of "Die Rezeption Hermann Broch's im Makrokontext des Gesamtbriefwechsels Ludwig von Fickers" (25–41). Ficker's correspondence is never far from considering [End Page 150] Broch, whether it is addressed to "Die Herausgeber (Harald Binde und Ernst Schönwiese)," "Die Exilanten (Werner Kraft und Friedrich Torberg)," "Die Wissenschaftler*innen (Walter Bapka und Sidonie Cassirer)," or "Die Literat*innen (Julius Kiener und Paula Schlier)." Besides providing background on the figures named in their relation to Ficker's correspondence about Broch, Ender provides a rationale (38–39) showing how connections manifested through Ficker's letters would not have become evident without tracing them. Space constraints allow only briefer discussion of the other essays, but it is soon apparent that the topic of ethics working parallel or counter to aesthetics was a major issue of the symposium. Anton Unterkircher's essay "Ethic und Ästhetik sind (nicht) Eins: Hermann Broch und das geheime Motto des Brenner" (43–56), for example, shows reciprocal influences between Broch and the defining but never explicitly articulated ethos of that journal in reaction to Wittgenstein's insights in the Tractatus; major contributors to the Brenner are shown as living out its "secret motto." In "The Pathos of Experience: On the Presence of Kierkegaard in Hermann Broch's Authorship—with a View to Theodor Haecker and Der Brenner" (87–99) Steen Tullberg traces the origins of Broch's encounters with the Danish theologian on the subject of values theory as well as Kierkegaard's influence subsequently suffusing Broch's work, directly and as filtered...