Search results

The work of Henri Lefebvre Rhythmanalysis, Space, Time and Everyday Life (2004) is generally known as the original proposer of rhythmanalysis, inspired by the last chapter of Gaston Bachelard's book La dialectique de la durée (1963), entitled ‘Rhythmanalysis’. Nevertheless, it was the Portuguese philosopher Lúcio Pinheiro dos Santos who developed the notion of rhythmanalysis. In this chapter I address this episode of the genealogy of rhythmanalysis aiming to contribute to a broader understanding of its context of origin. I also present fragments of a rhythmanalysis exercise developed in Caminito, Buenos Aires, as part of my research in the field of art studies. Following a pre-Platonic notion of rhythm (Benveniste, 1966), I draw on those fragments as much as on the reflexive confrontation of rhythmanalysis with feminist and ch'ixi epistemologies (e.g., Haraway, 1988; Rivera, 2018) in order to propose what I come to call rhuthmanalysis.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

Looking at a series of recent large street protests in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, the chapter examines the relationship between political action, urban space, and media use. We specifically look at what we are calling media epiphanies, moments in which the public becomes aware of its existence as a mediated public, that is, as a public that is forged through the use of a particular media. We rely on extensive participant observation and interviews for the description of the June 2013 protests and the subsequent massive rallies. We examine the materiality of the employed media and the experience of participants to understand the meaning of the phenomenon, for which we used a combination of Frankfurt and Toronto Schools approach. The strength of the fluid June 2013 protests in São Paulo questioned the political status quo and served as a trampoline for subsequent media demonstrations whose political impact relied as well on traditional cultural forms. The 2016 impeachment House vote, as a true media event, reconstructed, in positive and negative terms, the fractured political dialogue of representation. The concept of media epiphany can be used to assess the strength of demonstrations and the meaning of collective action in general. Identifying these phenomena, we can give focus to empirical research and better examine the complex intersections between forms of communications, physical environments, and the experience of the individual in contemporary cities.

Since the late 1980s, the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform, alongside the anti-asylum movement, has promoted a change in the way of treating people with mental suffering in the country. This process produced transformations in the flows and forms in which individuals with mental illnesses use the city, intending to make the city itself less unequal.

Taking into account that accessibility measures must consider individual, temporal, transportation and land-use elements as relevant, this study will focus on the relation between mobility and access, looking at subjects who were submitted to prolonged psychiatric hospitalisation and got discharged to live in the Residential Therapeutic Services – RTS, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. In order to do that, the study used focus groups, observation, shadowing and in-depth interviews as methodologies strategies.

The results of the study demonstrate that: (a) there are a variety of ways of accessing the city; (b) displacements outside the facilities are characterised by the proximity of the destinations and by being made, mostly, on foot; (c) there is a restriction regarding the use of public transport system; and (d) access to money is a determinant factor for the accomplishment of mobility practices in city spaces. However, it is also observed that the mobility and access to the city can exert an effect of autonomy by allowing governance of the subjects’ own time and destination.

The aim of the chapter is to examine the importance and use of reviews in the marketing communication of selected spa tourism enterprises on the Internet. The subject of the research are reviews as an important part of the online reputation of spa tourism enterprises and the object of the research is marketing communication on the Internet. The chapter focuses on spas located in Slovakia. The primary sources are the results of a quantitative survey conducted by standardized observation of the websites and profiles of all spa tourism enterprises in Slovakia under study on the social networks Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube based on predetermined criteria. At the same time, the results of the primary survey are conducted by the method of questioning using the technique of structured interviews. The chapter uses theoretical research methods such as analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, and generalization. The chapter presents the results of qualitative research using the Sankey diagram, processed by Atlas.ti software. The results of the research point to the fact that spa tourism enterprises in Slovakia use their own websites and social networks to communicate in the online environment, where they monitor both positive and negative reviews. However, they often do not work with reviews systematically enough and do not make use of standardized procedures and available technologies that would enable them to manage their online reputation more effectively.

From 1850 to 1913, the Portuguese economy expanded slowly and diverged from the European core. In contrast, during the interwar period, Portugal achieved higher growth and partially caught up to the levels of labor productivity of Western Europe. Higher growth in Portugal after World War I occurred in a framework of protection and increasing levels of state intervention. Growth was due to structural changes that favored sectors with higher levels of factor productivity. Such changes were associated with growth in domestic demand and higher levels of investment, and were helped by sustained export levels, the continuation of essential imports, and the restoration of capital inflows.

The role of information technology (IT) in the business arena has continuously shifted over the last decades, and it has become an important part of how companies manage and control their resources. User satisfaction in IT usage is critical because this construct is often viewed as a surrogate for IT success. Decisions regarding the building of the technical IT architecture should be closely linked to the organizational design of the company itself. So, IT plays a crucial role in organization, especially regarding the accounting function.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the body of knowledge in the extent to which IT affects the ability to solve accounting tasks. We will measure the impact of IT on user satisfaction, on accounting information use and, finally, on accountants' tasks.

The relationship between IT and management accounting practices was investigated. On one hand, data from Portuguese manufacturing firms were collected using a survey and analyzed using statistical software. On the other hand, based on findings from 17 in-depth interviews, 6 case studies were built and analyzed.

The findings suggest that user satisfaction in IT usage and the use of accounting techniques and accounting information increases with new IT investments. We also find a tendency for change in the decentralization of management accounting tasks.

These study findings have significant implication for practice and research. Today accounting and IT are inseparable and accountant's uses of sophisticated management accounting techniques are clearly dependent of IT existence.