The logic of basic education provision and public goods preferences in Chinese fiscal federalism.

Without election or re-election motivations, what factors have impacted public goods preferences in an authoritarian country such as China? More specifically, what makes political elites be devoted to or not be devoted to local public goods provision? This study, using basic education provision as an example, intends to gauge the impact of leadership selection on public goods provision in China. It is found that career trajectories of politicians have a bearing on basic education provision. The findings suggest that even under a top-down appointment system, homegrown politicians are more willing to cater to local preferences, especially on basic education provision, which suggests an extension of Riker's theory, applied in a non-democratic regime. Numerous studies have examined the impacts of decentralization on a variety of aspects of public governance in different contexts. Nevertheless, the unique contribution of this study is its policy implication that political centralization may not be an effective solution for local public governance even in an authoritarian context.

Centro y periferia en el marxismo de posguerra / Downtown and periphery in the post-war Marxism

Cuatro economistas marxistas desenvolvieron en la posguerra importantes estudios de la relacióncentro-periferia. Mientras que Paul Baran y Paul Sweezy fueron precursores de ese abordaje, SamirAmín y Ernest Mandel aportaron desarrollos más elaborados del mismo tema. Todos investigaron en un período de reconstrucción pos-bélica y expansión capitalista, que amplió la brecha entre las economías avanzadas y atrasadas. ¿Cuál fue su visión de esa asimetría?.

Important studies of the downtown-periphery relationship were developed by four Marxist economists in the postwar. While Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy were precursors to this approach, Samir Amín and Ernest Mandel provided more elaborate developments of the same subject. All of them investigated in a post-war reconstruction and a capitalist expansion period, which widened the gap between the advanced and the lagged economies. What was your vision of this asymmetry?.

A metamorfose das necessidades em desejos / The metamorphosis of the needs in desires

Lacan e Kojève "modernizaram" a ideia hegeliana do desejo colocado como essência da espécie humana, inspirando-se na linguística estruturalista que inscreve o sujeito na linguagem. O capitalismo determina social e historicamente esse desejo, já que as trocas mercantis constituem uma linguagem grosseira, a "linguagem que as mercadorias falam entre si", segundo a feliz frase de Marx. Disso resulta que o propósito aparentemente racional das compras, o imperativo de satisfazer as necessidades vitais finitas, é metamorfoseado na busca compulsiva e inconsciente por desejos venais inacessíveis e infinitos - compulsão assimilável à perversão sexual do fetichismo - o que abre perspectivas de mercantilização ilimitada à globalização capitalista.

Lacan and Kojève have "modernized" the Hegelian conception of desire placed as the essence of the mankind, based on structuralist linguistics that inscribes the subject in language. Capitalism determines socially and historically this desire because the mercantile exchanges are a rough language, "the language that the goods speak to each other", in Marx's happy expression. As a result, the seemingly rational purpose of purchases, the need to meet finite vital needs, is morphed into compulsive and unconscious search for inaccessible and infinite venal desires - similar to compulsion in the sexual perversion of fetishism - which opens prospects for unlimited commercialization for the capitalist globalization.

Impact of economic conditions on the secondary sex ratio in a post-communist economy.

According to the Trivers-Willard hypothesis the secondary sex ratio (SSR, the ratio of male to female newborns [M/F]) should be positively related to the parents' living conditions. This also means that if in some population parents experience environmental (e.g. economic) stress, the SSR should be relatively low. If this holds true, the fluctuations in the SSR of offspring could be one of the ways the human population reacts to environmental (and also socio-economic) changes. Although confirmed for many human populations, such a relationship was not observed in the populations living in the communist-era planned-economy countries until recently. We test the hypothesis that economic stress in Poland after the communist era is also related to the SSR decrease. Using quarterly data from the years 1995-2007 about the total number of live male (M) and female (F) newborns born in central Poland (sample size=310,532), we calculated the time series of the SSR. The quarterly economic conditions of the studied population within the period under consideration constituted the time series of the percentage change in private consumption at constant prices of the year 2000. The relationship between the SSR and the economic conditions in the analyzed 47 quarters of the year was tested with the use of the ARMA models. We have found that four quarters (one year) after the occurrence of economic stress there was a decline in the SSR. This result is consistent with the Trivers-Willard hypothesis at the population level in a modern free-trade economy of a post-communist country.

Trabalho e identidade em tempos sombrios: insegurança ontológica na experiência atual com o trabalho / Work and identity in dark times: ontological insecurity in actual experience with the work

O livro volta ao passado para reconstruir as principais idéias que o Ocidente criou a respeito do trabalho. Qual seu sentido entre os gregos? Filósofos como Aristóteles e Platão tinham uma visão do trabalho radicalmente diferente da criada pela modernidade, sobretudo graças a grandes figuras como Adam Smith, Max Weber, Karl Marx e Émilie Durkheim.

The trial of the new woman: citizens-in-training in the new Soviet Republic.

This essay examines the texts of Soviet plays from the 1920s known as agitation trials that deal with issues of women's emancipation and participation in the public sphere. It argues that, far from showing women to be men's equals (the ostensible purpose of the plays), the trials give a shocking portrayal of their heroines' faults, from passivity and meddling to gossip and lack of discipline. Given these weaknesses, the women delegates are supposed to recognise their need for tutelage from the new authorities. Their citizenship is thus held, at best, on contingent approval from those authorities.