Nominal Status Research Articles

Civil society organisations in India and construction of multiplicity of human rights

Human rights discourse has increasingly been adopted by social movements and civil society organisations (CSOs) around the world and especially in the global south. At the same time, the same discourse has generated enormous negative and critical assessments from different scholars and disciplines who consider human rights as Eurocentric, exclusionary and against the people of the global south. However, these two trends remain contradictory. By presenting original research on the multidimensionality of human rights practice by CSOs in New Delhi, this article considers both notions of ‘human’ and ‘rights’ as empty signifiers. Hence, recognition of their nominal status becomes central to our understanding of the adoption of human rights by social movements and CSOs.

Out-of-The-Money CEOs: Private Control Premium and Option Exercise by CEOs

When a proxy contest is looming, the rate at which CEOs exercise options in order to sell (hold) the resulting shares slows down by 80% (accelerates by 60%), consistent with their desire to maintain or strengthen voting rights when facing challenges. Such deviations are closely aligned with features unique to proxy contests, such as the record dates and nomination status, and are more pronounced when the private benefits are higher or when the voting rights are more crucial. The distortions suggest that incumbents value their stocks higher than the market price when voting rights are valuable for defending control.

Levitating the Pentagon

On 21 October 1967 Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Ed Sanders of the band The Fugs, and others, organized an “exorcism” of the Pentagon in which several thousand demonstrators participated. Most historians have regarded this event as “a put on” or at best as “performance art.” This article takes seriously the nominal status of the ritual as a “sacred” or “magical” event. It argues that the organizers were utilizing innovative strategies of social action to alter the terms of debate regarding the Vietnam War.
 Inasmuch as these strategies drew on “secret” insights into the nature of social reality, they were seen as “magical” and in continuity with pre-modern esoteric traditions. Finally, it is argued that the new left turned to such tactics out of a deep frustration with traditional forms of democratic political engagement.

Sustainability as ideological praxis: The acting out of planning’s master‐signifier

The rise and rise of sustainability in urban and social policy circles has transformed the discursive terrain of urban politics. In 2009, Gunder and Hillier argued sustainability is now urban planning’s central empty signifier, offering an overarching narrative around which practice can be oriented. This paper takes up the notion of sustainability as an empty/master‐signifier, arguing that the recognition of its nominal status is central to understanding how it operates to produce ideological foundation. Drawing upon a series of interviews and focus groups with urban and social policy makers and practitioners in Vancouver, Canada, Zizek’s 1989 critique of the cynical functioning of contemporary ideology is used to interpret the city’s engagement with sustainability. Focusing on ‘social sustainability’ it is argued that sustainability has provided a quilting point that has enabled new social and urban policy‐related partnerships and organizational agendas to be developed. However, this coherence remains unstable and plagued by questions of signification due to the radical negativity of the master‐signifier, where efforts at definition and agreement are haunted by the non‐presence of sustainability. It is argued that this framing of sustainability as ideological conduit in Vancouver helps explain the co‐presence of transformative rhetoric and business‐as‐usual. Using Zizek’s critique of cynical reason in contemporary ideology, interview data is drawn upon to show how many practitioners seek to distance themselves from sustainability, but at the same time continue to act it out anyway. In conclusion, the sobering politics of Zizek’s critique of contemporary ideology are considered in the light of growing urban problems.

El sufijo «infinitivizador» en quechua

El quechua presenta un sufijo formador de nuevas palabras que ha sido descrito como derivativo nominal deverbativo, es decir, como un sufijo que deriva nombres a partir de elementos lexicales de naturaleza verbal. Sin embargo, la categorización de este sufijo como un derivativo nominal trae consigo una serie de escollos de los que daremos cuenta en el presente estudio con la finalidad de plantear una propuesta factible respecto del estatus nominal o verbal del morfema involucrado. Nuestra investigación propone una recategorización del sufijo en cuestión ya que las descripciones taxonómicas solamente lo han definido como una terminación propiamente infinitiva que constituye formas no personales, pero cuya naturaleza es de tipo nominal. El problema potencial que encontramos en el análisis tradicional de este sufijo es que nos remite a una forma nominal como producto derivado a partir de un verbo; no obstante, el comportamiento de dicha forma derivada dista mucho de ser propiamente un nombre.

A Descriptive Analysis of Referral Sources for Gifted Identification Screening by Race and Socioeconomic Status

A dataset containing demographic information, gifted nomination status, and gifted identification status for all elementary school students in the state of Georgia ( N = 705,074) was examined. The results indicated that automatic and teacher referrals were much more valuable than other referral sources. Asian and White students were much more likely to be nominated than Black or Hispanic students. Students receiving free or reduced-price lunches were much less likely to be nominated than students paying for their own lunches. The results suggest that inequalities in nomination, rather than assessment, may be the primary source of the underrepresentation of minority and low-SES students in gifted programs.

The Old English relative þe

In current accounts the Old English relative þe is analysed in two radically different ways. The traditional view, inherited from the nineteenth-century grammarians, views the word as a relative pronoun, while the generative analysis, derived from some remarks of Jespersen on the ModE relative that, takes it to be a subordinating particle. The generativist view is based on the word's lack of morphological variation, whereas the older approach examines more generally the grammar of the word, noting that the invariable þe shares the typical nominal categories of number and case, functioning both as a singular and a plural and representing all the four cases of OE nominal elements. A further indication of the word's nominal status is its referential function, distinguishing between specific and generic reference. Against these clear facts, the lack of overt inflection is a minor idiosyncrasy, paralleled by the OE generic man/mon, whose pronominal status is widely agreed. Þe may have been a subordinating particle in origin, but by historical OE times it retained this function in relative clauses only after relative adverbs, having been reanalysed elsewhere either as a relative adverb itself, or, in its most frequent relative use, as a pronoun.

Mortality dynamics ofDaphniain contrasting habitats and their role in ecological divergence

Summary1. TheDaphnia pulex‐pulicariaspecies complex has been proposed as an example of rapid ecological speciation, associated with divergence along the gradient of waterbody size from temporary ponds to deep, stratified lakes. However, this divergence is incomplete, and thus represents an opportunity to study ecological divergence as it is occurring.2. Dynamics of twelve populations ofDaphniain thepulex‐pulicariaspecies complex were monitored over 1 year. Six temporary pond populations and six permanent lake populations were compared to evaluate demographic differences that may contribute to ecological divergence in this complex.3. Pond populations experienced greater changes in density, which were reflected in more extreme growth rates, higher birth rates and higher mortality rates than those of lake populations.4. Mitochondrial DNA was isolated from up to three clones from each population, the D‐loop of the control region was sequenced, and a phylogenetic tree was constructed. This tree revealed two strongly supported clades. The clades were not congruent with habitat type and nominal status, indicating that interhabitat gene flow occurs easily and that the nominal taxa are incompletely diverged.5. Published reports of genetic life history differences in theD. pulex‐pulicariacomplex are consistent with the demographic differences reported here. This suggests that ecological differences between the habitats are selectively maintaining trait differences despite the possibility for genetic exchange. Thus, these taxa may be at the inception of ecological speciation.

The status of Barbitistes serricauda (Fabricius, 1794) (Ensifera: Phaneropteridae) -- a re-assessment

The status of Barbitistes serricauda (Fabricius, 1794) (Ensifera: Phanero- pteridae) - a re-assessment. - In this paper, we examine the taxonomic and nominal status of a widespread species of European bush-cricket, Barbitistes serricauda (Fabricius, 1794) (Ensifera: Phaneropteridae). The name B. serricauda has almost exclusively been applied to a species occur- ring mainly north of the Alps from Spain through Central Europe to the Black Sea. A re-examination of two syntypes of B. serricauda has now re- vealed that they represent a different species occurring on the south side of the Alps in France, Italy and Switzerland, currently treated as B. obtusus Targioni-Tozzetti, 1881. Therefore, the species from the south side of the Alps should be called B. serricauda (instead of B. obtusus), while a new name would have to be found for the species from the north side of the Alps (hitherto B. serricauda). Considering the long established and well-defined use of B. serricauda and B. obtusus, this scenario would inevitably result in severe confusion and nomenclatural instability. Hence, a formal request will be submitted in December 2004 to the International Commission on Zoo- logical Nomenclature to preserve the accustomed use of these names. Meanwhile, we suggest maintaining the prevailing usage in both cases. We furthermore discuss the status of Barbitistes obtusus alpinus Fruhstorfer, 1920, for which an invalid neotype was designated in a recent publication.

Morphometric and genetic analysis shows that Haliplus wehnckei is a junior synonym of H. sibiricus (Coleoptera: Haliplidae)

AbstractSpecimens of the two nominal species Haliplus sibiricus Motschulsky, and H. wehnckei Gerhardt, were examined by enzyme electrophoresis and morphometrical methods. Beetles collected from five different localities along the north Swedish coast were screened at ten different loci, and paramere shape variation was studied using Elliptic Fourier description. Wright's F-statistics were computed to assess population structure, and PLS-analysis (Projections to Latent Structures modelling) to estimate shape differences. We revise the distribution of the two species in Sweden. The results show a gross overlap and sympatry. Paramere shape analyses indicate the existence of two different forms, which change in frequency with latitude. There are morphologically intermediate specimens that would be difficult to place into either species. Genetic data do not support the nominal species status, and FST-values indicate moderate genetical differences between the populations. We propose that H. sibiricus and H. wehnckei are conspecific. They are either subspecies, or represents two different morphotypes of a clinally varying character. Our data support the latter. Accordingly, H. wehnckei Gerhardt, 1877, is a junior synonym of H. sibiricus Motschulsky, 1860, syn. n.

The tradeoff between price and quality of services in the Philippines

This paper examines the tradeoff that consumers make between price and quality in the demand for health care. The analysis is based on data collected from both households and health care facilities in Cebu, Philippines. The availability of both types of data makes this one of only a handful of demand for health care studies that includes detailed information on both individual characteristics and facility attributes of all relevant alternatives. The developing country setting provides substantial variation in the type of facility chosen, ranging from home delivery aided only by friends and relatives at one extreme to modern private hospitals at the other end of the spectrum. The alternatives vary greatly in quality and price, making this an ideal context for examining the role of these variables in facility choice. The nested logit model specifications that are estimated contain price, travel time, and different combinations of quality measures, including the availability of medical supplies, practitioner training, service availability, facility size and crowdedness, and their interaction with individual characteristics. In addition, the sensitivity of the results to different choice-set definitions is analyzed. In particular, models that use conventional choice-set definitions that are based only on nominal status are compared with models that attempt to classify facilities into relatively homogeneous groups based on price and quality. The estimation results, which correct for the two-stage design of the household survey, indicate that facility crowding and practitioner training are significant determinants of consumer choice. The results also indicate that individual characteristics such as education of the woman interact in important ways with quality in influencing choice. For example, the availability of drugs is a significant determinant of facility choice for women with high levels of education, but not for others. In addition, the results support the hypothesis that price is a significant determinant for poor households, but not for other households. The model is used to conduct policy simulations designed to be informative to public officials interested in the effect of cost recovery schemes on utilization patterns. The simulations indicate that, when public facilities simultaneously increase user fees and the aspects of quality over which policy makers can exercise control in the short-run, the mean probability of using public facilities increases for both poor and non-poor households.

"A lab of one's own". The Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women at Cambridge University, 1884-1914.

The Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women was established at Cambridge University in 1884 to prepare the students of Newnham and Girton Colleges to sit the Natural Sciences Tripos, first opened to women in 1881. For thirty years, until its closure in 1914, the Balfour Laboratory served as the central conduit for biological instruction for the women of Cambridge, introducing them to the new program of experimental biology developed by the physiologist Michael Foster and the embryologist Francis Maitland Balfour. Directed by distinguished women graduates, the Balfour Laboratory became recognized as the leading center for women's biological instruction in Britain. Its significance, however, extends beyond its nominal status as a teaching laboratory. It provided university positions for able scientists who otherwise would not have been placed, offered advanced students the opportunity to engage in independent research, and, most important, formed the locus for the scientific subculture created by women at Cambridge to compensate for their exclusion from the social community of science. Drawing upon college and university archival records, this essay offers institutional, social, and biographical research that broadens our understanding of the experience of the first generation of women to pursue a higher education in the life sciences at one of the world's premier universities.