Search results

This study examines the cost-effectiveness of reintegrating ex-combatants from armed groups in Colombia. After an ethnographic exploration of the challenges of reintegration that ex-combatants face, I evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the reintegration program operated by the Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization (Agencia para la Reincorporación y la Normalización, ARN), the government agency that handles the reintegration of ex-combatants from all armed groups in Colombia. I analyze the agency's approaches (past, current, and proposed) toward reintegrating ex-combatants from various armed groups, comparing the financial costs against outcomes. The ARN has been successful at achieving two of its primary goals: minimizing recidivism and maximizing employment of ex-combatants. Only 10% of ARN program participants rejoin criminal groups and 93% find employment across both the formal and informal sectors (informal employment is widespread in Colombia and Latin America). The ARN has been unsuccessful at providing adequate security for ex-combatants. Approximately 6% of ex-combatants enrolled in the ARN program have been murdered since 2001: approximately 3,000 program participants have been assassinated. Next, I evaluate the cost-effectiveness of both the ARN's overall program and its outcome across different regions and demographics of the participant population. Finally, I suggest ways that other countries facing the challenge of reintegrating populations of ex-combatants can learn from the Colombian experience, as well as ways that Colombia can improve its own reintegration cost-effectiveness.

The resurgence of left governments in Latin America raised expectations for the reincorporation of popular sectors broadly writ into the political arena from which they largely had been excluded by governments committed to Washington Consensus policies. This was particularly true in cases where mobilization by broad-based, heterogeneous social movement coalitions set the stage for their election. In some cases highly contentious cycles of mass mobilization in the context of economic crisis and party system collapse opened opportunities for outsider left candidates and their new political movements and parties to sweep into office. This was the case of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and, partially, Argentina. In other cases institutional continuity prevailed but mass discontent with low average growth, increasing poverty and inequality, and declining opportunities drove the electorate to vote for more established left parties. Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile are the emblematic cases. In all cases, to a greater or lesser degree, there was an assumption of a closer alignment between left governments and social movements than before. This chapter tests such assumption in the case of Bolivia because it exhibited exceptionally favorable conditions for a close alignment of social movements and the government of Evo Morales, the country’s first president of indigenous origin.

This paper presents a framework to study organizational change using the metaphor of ritual. Concepts of myth and ritual facilitate understanding of change interventions. A qualitative study of Appreciative Inquiry helped answer the question: what mechanisms or processes explain the effect of the Appreciative Inquiry Summit? Four mechanisms, based on qualitative interviews and anthropological and sociological theory, explain why the AI Summit produces organizational change: (1) internal dialogue: recognizing a positive dimension and new vocabulary at the individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels of analysis; (2) communitas: the mechanism whereby new relationships form due to relational anti-structure; (3) commitment: how organization members cognitively and cathectically commit to the organization; and (4) longitudinal repetition: how sustained and continuous change involves repetition of ritual practices and the recognition.

This chapter explores the symbolic connections between coming of age liminality and identity-oriented consumption practices in postmodern American culture, specifically among adolescent girls.

Forty-two female participants (ages 20–23) participants were asked to answer the general question of “Who am I?” through creating identity collages and writing accompanying narrative summaries for each of three discrete life stages: early adolescence (past-self), late adolescence (present-self), and adulthood (future-self). Data were analyzed using a hermeneutical approach.

Coming of age in postmodern American consumer culture involves negotiating paradoxical identity tensions through consumption-oriented benchmarks, termed “market-mediated milestones.” Market-mediated milestones represent achievable criteria by which adolescents solidify their uncertain liminal self-concepts.

In contrast to the traditional Van Gennepian conceptualization of rites of passage, market-mediated milestones do not necessarily mark a major transition from one social status to another, nor do they follow clearly defined stages. Market-mediated milestones help adolescents navigate liminality through an organic, nonlinear, and incremental coming of age process.

Rather than traditional cultural institutions (e.g., church, family), the marketplace is becoming the central cultural institution around which adolescent coming of age identity is constructed. As such, organizations have the power to create market-mediated milestones for young people. In doing so, organizations should be mindful of adolescent well-being.

This research marks a turning point in understanding traditional rites of passage in light of postmodern degradation of cultural institutions. The institutions upon which traditional rites of passage are based have changed; therefore, our conceptions of what rites of passage are today should change as well.

The purpose of this chapter is to document how a new learning technic may create transformative learning in leadership in an organisational practice.

The learning methods developed in the learning in practice (LIP) project include aesthetic performances combined with reflections. The intention has been to explore how leadership may be transformed, when leaders work as a collective of leaders. The learning methods developed and tested in the LIP project are art-informed learning methods, concepts of liminality and reflection processes carried out in the leaders’ organisational practice.

One of the most important findings in the LIP project in relation to transformative learning is a new learning technique based on guided processes rooted in aesthetic performance combined with reflections and separation of roles as performer and audience. Reflection processes related to aesthetic performance serve as argument for the impact of ‘the audience wheel’.

Leaders who perform and reflect in a collective of leaders can better deal with complex organisational problems and enhance growing of welfare-in-the-making from an inside and out perspective. Moreover, the separation between classroom teaching and practical intervention will diminish when leaders learn aesthetic performance and reflections as a practical technique.

Tourism planning is an important issue for destination management organizations to satisfy both local community and tourists. This chapter attempts to explain the process and outcomes of a strategic and participative tourism planning project through a case study in Patagonia, Argentina. The general framework of the study, principles of cooperation throughout the project, the geographical information, stages of planning and implementation strategies will be discussed.