Search results

Purpose: This chapter presents some results of a research project on the new modes of production of television crime news in Argentina. The authors explore the creation of content regarding crime in television newscasts, focusing on the ways of accessing the sources, circulation of information, and exhibition strategies.

Methodology/approach: The enquiry involved interviews with news workers and observations in nine stations in Buenos Aires City. The authors describe the routines in the production of television crime news in Argentina, the ways of narrating and enunciating crime news on television, the role played by the police in the structure of the news, and the emergence of new sources of information.

Findings: The authors outline three main findings: Most of the newscasts on television give prominence to crime news within their agendas since producers understand that this kind of information is attractive for the public; the authors observe that the way crime news is told defines the interpretive frame transmitted to viewers; and the authors describe how, in recent years, the production and presentation of crime news have changed as a result of the spread of digital technologies as sources of information.

Research limitations: First, the study was conducted in just one country. Second, it does not specifically explore why the criteria of newsworthiness as described in the chapter are used. This question can only be explored by looking closely at the experiences of the actors in their sociohistorical context; therefore, a cultural study would need to look in depth at the historic characteristics of the security forces in Argentina and their relation with the press. Finally, a study on viewers’ opinions is needed in order to understand their interpretation of crime news in terms of meaning.

Originality/value: The value of the study is to visualize the cultural specificities of the local newsmakers to understand the way they produce crime news. Whereas the study undoubtedly shares similar characteristics with news production in other countries, it focuses on the specific environment of local newsmakers and shows how the press experiences and visualizes crime and fear of crime in Argentina.

The purpose of this study is to understand the complex interplay between illicit opioids trade and consumption practices and state policies that aim to reduce their misuse.

The study adopted an exploratory design. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews with 31 commercially oriented drug dealers in Uyo, Nigeria. The framework approach was used in data analyses, while “friction” provided the interpretive lens.

Accounts revealed public concerns over the misuse of tramadol and other opioids among young people and the associated health and social harms. These concerns provided support for enforcement-based approaches to prescription opioids control, including police raids on pharmacy stores. These measures did not curtail opioids supply and consumption. Instead, they constrained access to essential medicines for pain management, encouraged illegal markets and fuelled law enforcement corruption in the form of police complicity in illegal tramadol trade.

The findings reveal the frictions of drug control in Nigeria, wherein enforcement-based approaches gained traction through public concerns about opioids misuse but also faced resistance due to the persistence of non-medical use and illegal supply channels made possible by law enforcement complicity. These indicate a need to prioritize approaches that seek to reduce illegal supply and misuse of opioids while ensuring availability of these medications for health-care needs.

The study is unique in its focus on the creative tension that exists between state control measures and local opioids supply and consumption practices.

A fundamental premise of economic theory is that of a homogenous subject. This unified and intentional subject also implicitly defines the welfare function that forms the foundation of economic development theory and policy today. Unfortunately, such a concept of agency is representative of mostly urban and majority populations and does not include indigenous communities who are peripheral in most developing nations. The concept of development presumes an attachment to modernization and deracination, paying little heed to conservation of natural resources that are of sacral value to tribal communities. This paper aims to show how economics neglects cultural and group differences and yet asserts a powerful influence on development policy. Institutional economists and anthropologists have contested this hegemony but at the same time have also been co‐opted into development management in several ways that are discussed below.

The case of indigenous communities in Bangladesh is investigated and their exclusion from development elucidated by citing the conflicts that tribal groups have had with majority populations and the state. This is compared to the situation of tribal communities in the state of Kerala in India.

It is concluded that a heterogeneous imaginary at the level of the nation state allows possibilities for indigenous voices to be represented in development policy formation and that such heterogeneity itself opens the channel for an alternative construction of development.

The case studies may not be widely applicable to every context.

The universality of policy suggestions should be questioned if such policy is not representative of minorities within the context of a nation.

The point that methodological individualism and the grounding in economics of development theory leads it to avoid community concerns has not been addressed before. The paper also looks at a historical development of the discourse of development in a new way. Finally, the case of Bangladesh has not been discussed in this manner or compared to Kerala.

The purpose of this study is to examine the politics, political economy, and fallout of hawkish regulatory policy on prescription drugs in Nigeria. Hawkish regulatory policy on prescription drug in Nigeria, such as opioid analgesics, is a very complex and multifaceted one, which usually involves the interplay of many factors and parties.

Policy manuals, official government gazettes (legislations, regulations, Acts and decrees), academic literature and a direct ethnographic observation of events surrounding the regulation of prescription drugs were reviewed and engaged.

The results revealed that Nigerian and global political economy and politics interface to define the direction of the new restrictive opioid policy, with resultant friction between prohibition and consumption. The reviews showed that the overarching “get-tough” and “repressive” policy are not necessarily founded on empirical evidence of an increase in prescription drug sales or use, but more as a product of the interplay of both internal and external politics and the prevailing socioeconomic order.

Instead of borrowing extensively from or being influenced by repressive Western drug laws and perspectives, Nigerian policymakers on prescription opioids should take control of the process by drawing up a home-grown policy that is less intrusive and punitive in nature for better outcomes. A mental sea change is required to understand the intrigues of Western power in Nigeria’s politics and political economy to avoid the continuous symptomatic failure of drug policy.

The politics and economic influence of the United Nations, USA and Western powers, as well as the axiom of moral panic of prescription drugs scares within the Nigerian environment, are particularly significant in the making of the emerging hawkish policy on prescription drugs in Nigeria.

This study aims to examine the impact of relative importance of local characteristics, distance from the city centre and unobservable spatial relation in explaining values of constant‐quality apartment units in Vienna.

Drawing on recent developments in spatial econometrics and spatial hedonic house price modelling, the rent gradient hypothesis is examined by means of hedonic regression and spatial hedonic regression. Spatial autocorrelation tests are applied in order to assess possible presence of spatial dependence. The authors borrow Florax et al.'s specification search strategy in order to choose the most appropriate spatial model specification.

This research shows that local characteristics – or particularities – proxied by district and distance from the city centre are important location variables with regard to the Viennese apartment market. The spatial analysis suggests that the apartment prices are spatially autocorrelated and the Viennese apartment market has a distance‐based neighbourhood structure. The main finding is, however, that residents are willing to bid more for constant‐quality apartment units that are close to the centre of the city.

Rent gradient hypothesis is usually tested within non‐spatial hedonic frameworks: this study estimates a spatial hedonic model additionally in order to allow for comparison of results. This is also the first article to apply recent developments in spatial econometrics to examine explicitly rent gradient theory in the context of the Viennese apartment market.

Strategic analyses of Mediterranean destinations have well documented the impacts of mass tourism, including high levels of seasonality and landscape degradation as a result of the “anarchic” nature of tourism development in these destinations. The lack of a strategic framework is widely recognised in academic and popular discourse. What is often missing, however, is local voice and attention to the local particularities that have shaped the course of tourism development in these places. Focusing on narratives of people living and working in Santorini, Greece, this paper aims to examine tourism development as a particular cultural experience of development.

The authors conducted narrative interviews with 22 local residents and entrepreneurs. Participants belonged to different occupational sectors and age groups. These are supplemented with secondary data, consisting of books, guides, documentaries and online news articles on Santorini.

The analysis and interpretation by the authors identify remembered, experienced and imagined phases of tourism development, which we label as romancing tourism, disenchantment and reimagining tourism.

Professionalisation has certainly allowed the improvement of quality standards, but in transforming hosts into service providers, a distance and objectivity is created that results in a loss of authenticity. Authenticity is not just about what the tourists seek but also about what a place is or can be, and the “sense of place” that residents have and use in their everyday lives.

Local narratives offer insights into the particularities of tourism development and the varied, contested and dynamic meanings of places. Place narratives can therefore be a useful tool in developing a reflexive and participative place-making process.

The study serves the understanding of how tourism, subject to the global-local relations, is a particular experience of development that shapes a place’s identity. The case of Santorini shows how place-making involves changing, multilayered desires and contradictory visions of tourism and development. This makes socio-cultural and environmental challenges hard to resolve. It is thus challenging to change the course of development, as various actors at the local level and beyond have diverse interests and interpretations of what is desirable for the place.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of the “globalisation” of management control systems (MCSs) by investigating whether and why budget control structures established in German headquarters (HQs) are transferred to their Chinese subsidiaries and whether and why these structures are (not) used as intended by the HQs.

The research is based on a field study comprising 23 multinational companies (MNCs). Following a dyadic research design, representatives of the German HQs and Chinese subsidiaries were interviewed. Data were collected during 58 semi-structured interviews with 78 management accountants and managers. Based on cross-case analyses, commonalities and differences were identified that provide insights into contextual influences that shape the way, in which global MCSs are de facto used at the subsidiary level.

The study provides evidence for different receptions at the subsidiary level. While the budget control structures established in the German HQs guide managerial decision-making in some cases, they get modified or even rejected in others. The findings suggest that these receptions are particularly contingent on the perceived utility of budget control structures among the locals, which is interrelated with the perceived predictability of future developments. In particular, the findings suggest that HQs may impact the paths of travel, given that an ex ante adjustment of global budget control structures may reinforce the reproduction of practices at the local level. The decision to adjust the structures is contingent on organisational characteristics.

The paper encourages further research on the contextual influences that impact how MCSs established at the HQ level are used at the subsidiary level. The paper focuses primarily on environmental peculiarities, which are potentially less important for management control devices other than budget control. Thus, the generalisability of the findings of this paper to other management control devices may be limited.

The findings suggest that MNCs should consider how foreign employees receive global MCSs established at the HQ level and take the locals’ perception of the utility of structures into account. Adjusting global structures without undermining them may reinforce their reproduction at the local level.

Based on a field study approach, the paper provides the first cross-case analysis that sheds light on the contextual influences on the ways, in which global budget control structures are used in foreign subsidiaries. Moreover, the simultaneous consideration of the HQ and subsidiary levels allows for an exploration of the complex interplay between actions and perceptions at the different levels. Eventually, the paper provides first evidence on the globalisation of management control structures within a setting with considerable economic, political and cultural disparities. The paper encourages and serves as a point of departure for further research culminating in a framework comprising important drivers of the globalisation of MCSs at different levels (e.g. environmental, organisational, individual).

Institutional ethnography is a method of inquiry that brings attention to people’s everyday work while simultaneously highlighting broader sites of administration and governance that may be organising that work. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the integration of institutional ethnography in health information practice research represents an important shift in the way that Library and Information Science professionals and researchers study and understand these practices.

This paper first explores the key tenets and conceptual underpinnings of Dorothy Smith’s institutional ethnography, illuminating the importance of moving between translocal and the local contexts and identifying ruling relations. Drawing from a library and information science study that combined interviews and textual analyses to examine the social organisation of family caregivers’ health-related information work, the paper then explores the affordances of starting in the local particularities and then moving outwards to the translocal.

The paper concludes with an overall assessment of what institutional ethnography can contribute to investigations of health information practices. By pushing from the local to the translocal, institutional ethnography enables a questioning of existing library and information science conceptualisations of context and of reappraising the everyday-life information seeking work/non-work dichotomy. Ultimately, in considering both the local and the translocal, institutional ethnography casts a wider net on understanding individuals’ health information practices.

With only two retrieved studies that combine institutional ethnography with the study of health information practices, this paper offers health information practice researchers a new method of inquiry in which to reframe the application of methods used.

This study examines the social and economic experiences of female food vendors in the informal economy in urban Ghana using a particularized analysis to challenge prevailing opinions that women working in the informal economy inevitably experience social oppression and economic marginalization.

Synthesizing data from ethnographic field observation of female street food vendors in urban Ghana with past ethnographic research, this study focuses on the cultural, historical, political, social, and economic particularities of the Ghanaian context to understand the experience of female urban street food vendors.

Ghanaian women working in informal food vending in urban environments in the Southern regions of Ghana experience a myriad of social and economic benefits including: strong social support networks, access to entrepreneurial skills and startup capital; heightened social status, resulting from loyal customers and community recognition; empowerment through financial autonomy; as well as pride in providing economic resources for children. These social and economic experiences serve as counterevidence to the dominant perspective that women in the informal economy experience social oppression and economic marginalization.

This research contributes qualitative data regarding the social and economic support systems established by women in the informal food economy in Ghana. Furthermore, it emphasizes that development agencies and policymakers understand the importance of these contextual dynamics in developing policies aimed at the informal economy.

As components of society, social classes contain individuals who are carriers of productive relationships. In the era of global capitalism, chains of accumulation are functionally integrating across borders and regions – uniquely altering the formation of productive relationships. How can we understand class relations in the global era, and in the context of regions and countries in Oceania and Asia? How do transnational capitalist-class fractions, new middle strata, and labor undergird globalization? How have state apparatuses and other institutions in this part of the world become entwined with new transnational processes? To begin to consider these questions, this paper provides an overview and summary of studies on transnational class relations and the associated political economic changes occurring across areas of Asia and Oceania.