Going Underground: Banal Nationalism and Subterranean Elements in Argentina’s Falklands/Malvinas Claim

ABSTRACT

This article calls for consideration of underground elements that have been typically overlooked or unseen in debates about the nation and banal nationalism. The materialities and (re)presentation of elements such as earth, sand and rock have the capacity to be affective, contentious, to embody intimate memories of conflict and to reinforce national territorial aspirations. These subterranean elements have been ‘nationalised’, bathymetrically mapped and deployed by Argentina to make claims over territories in the South Atlantic, including the Falklands/Malvinas. Rather than re-examining these technical procedures undertaken by the state and analysing what they mean for the geopolitics of the South Atlantic, this article explores how the subterranean is manifest in everyday reproductions of nationalism and national memory in Argentina. It presents insights from research undertaken in a range of different environments in Argentina, encompassing museums, veterans’ centres and public monuments, to demonstrate how the presence of the elemental in the everyday can reinforce and also disrupt banal (territorial) nationalism. Furthermore it argues for conceptualisation of the elemental as part of a relational network that links matter, national citizenries and territories together. The conclusion posits that the subterranean elements and their (re)presentation are essential to understanding the materialisation of banal nationalism as part of the everyday reproduction and rejection of claims to ‘national’ territory.     

Digital gaming culture in Vietnam: an exploratory study

ABSTRACT

New information and communication technologies continue to spread rapidly into the Asian marketplace, which has led to new patterns of leisure consumption, one of the most popular being digital gaming. However, in Vietnam there is limited research on gaming as a leisure activity. The purpose of this study is to explore the phenomenon of digital gaming in Vietnam to better understand how it is practiced in this culture. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-five gaming industry figures and gamers. Thematic analysis was used to guide data collection and analysis. The findings indicate that glocalisation, socialised gaming practices and competitiveness characterise the Vietnamese gaming experience. The distinct culture of Vietnam combined with globalised gaming consumption habits has created new modes of play culture, and hence leisure experiences that are growing in pervasive and influential ways.     

Bargaining externalities in a privatization programme

In privatization programmes, the state commonly keeps a minority ownership stake in firms. We provide an explanation based on the externality that privatization of one firm has on the profitability of others. If this externality is negative, as with oligopolistic firms, the government can gain a strategic advantage in bargaining over the sale of one firm if it keeps an ownership share in another. We consider both the simultaneous and the sequential sale of firms. The results apply to the period in which privatization takes place, and are consistent with the delayed sale of minority ownership often observed in practice.     

A Bayesian Semiparametric Competing Risk Model with Unobserved Heterogeneity

This paper generalizes existing econometric models for censored competing risks by introducing a new flexible specification based on a piecewise linear baseline hazard, time‐varying regressors, and unobserved individual heterogeneity distributed as an infinite mixture of generalized inverse Gaussian (GIG) densities, nesting the gamma kernel as a special case. A common correlated latent time effect induces dependence among risks. Our model is based on underlying latent exit decisions in continuous time while only a time interval containing the exit time is observed, as is common in economic data. We do not make the simplifying assumption of discretizing exit decisions—our competing risk model setup allows for latent exit times of different risk types to be realized within the same time period. In this setting, we derive a tractable likelihood based on scaled GIG Laplace transforms and their higher‐order derivatives. We apply our approach to analyzing the determinants of unemployment duration with exits to jobs in the same industry or a different industry among unemployment insurance recipients on nationally representative individual‐level survey data from the US Department of Labor. Our approach allows us to conduct a counterfactual policy experiment by changing the replacement rate: we find that the impact of its change on the probability of exit from unemployment is inelastic. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corporate sustainability strategies in institutional adversity: Antecedent,outcome, and contingency effects

This study examines (i) how top-level managerial institutional ties drive corporate sustainability strategies of emerging market firms operating under conditions of institutional adversity; (ii) the impact of corporate sustainability strategies on market performance; and (iii) the moderating role of financial resource slack on the relationships between corporate sustainability strategies and market performance. The study builds from institutional development logic and the structure–conduct–performance paradigm. Primary data are collected from 300 firms operating in a major sub-Saharan African market. Findings show that top-level managerial institutional linkages with regulatory national governmental officials, local community leaders, and top managers at other firms drive corporate proactive and responsive sustainability strategies, which in turn influence market performance. In addition, the findings reveal that financial resource slack strengthens the path between corporate proactive sustainability strategies and market performance, but not the path between corporate responsive sustainability strategies and market performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Value for money in energy efficiency retrofits in Ireland: grant provider and grant recipients

The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) administers the Better Energy Homes scheme to provide a financial incentive for home owners to engage in energy efficiency retrofits. This study analyses data from the scheme and Building Energy Rating data for participants to the scheme to examine the value for money achieved by households. In addition, this research identifies which retrofit combinations provide greatest value for money, in terms of energy efficiency gains, for the grant provider. We utilize an error-in-variables approach to model the variation in benefits accruing to households of varying characteristics. We find that household and grant provider surplus can be maximized in the short term by retrofitting less energy efficient and larger homes, timber or steel frame homes and houses rather and apartments. The types of retrofits leading to the greatest surplus for both household and grant provider include cavity wall insulation paired with either a boiler with heating controls or heating controls only retrofit.     

Towards mediation: developing a theoretical framework to understand alternative dispute resolution

This article examines alternative approaches to conflict resolution by developing a theoretical framework that relates dispute resolution practice to philosophical assumptions about authority and knowledge. By investigating the assumptions underpinning interest‐based bargaining and mediation their link to direct democracy and challenge to managerial authority are revealed at the level of theory and practice.