The Born‐Again Favela: The Urban Informality of Pentecostalism in Rio de Janeiro

Since the 1980s, the metropolitan spaces of Brazil have seen a significant upsurge of the Christian Pentecostal movement, which today dominates the religious landscape of the favelas. In Rio de Janeiro, the rise of Pentecostalism coincided with the establishment of drug gangs as actors controlling favela territories. Based on an ethnographic field study conducted in a favela complex in the city's Zona Norte, this article examines the role and significance of the Pentecostal churches in Rio's favelas, both in everyday urban life and in the ways these areas are governed. One of my focal points of analysis is the increasing entanglement of actors in the drug industry and church actors. The article posits that the Pentecostal churches' role and significance, their institutional shape and their followers' practices are inextricably intertwined with the favela's social, spatial and political structural patterns. It shows the ways in which the evolving Pentecostal movement has permeated all aspects of the favela's informal way of urban life and government and has produced a new urban religious configuration in which the Pentecostal movement and the favela are intertwined and transform each other.     

Taking the pulse of accounting education reform: liberal education,sociological perspectives,and exploring ways forward

This paper examines the ‘state of play’ with regard to accounting education reform, which has been advocated for decades but is notable for having failed to produce significant change. We build on prior calls to ‘liberalise’ accounting education, recommending a move to a more relevant curriculum that considers accounting in its social context. Based on an analysis of the accounting curriculum in 31 Australian and 8 New Zealand universities, we find that, despite widespread and continuing calls for a broader educational approach, there are very few examples of systemic curricular-wide change to the traditional technical and vocational focus of accounting education. As a way forward, a sociologically-informed accounting curriculum is proposed to overcome the widely-recognised limitations of current approaches and the apparent failure of efforts to liberalise the curriculum. We argue that our approach would facilitate the broadening of the curriculum, and the development of better-educated, well-rounded, and socially-aware graduates.     

Debating the State in Private Housing Neighborhoods: The Governance of Homeowners' Associations in Urban Shanghai

This article examines the transformation of state power in urban China by investigating how the state governs a newly emerging type of neighborhood organization connected with housing privatization, the homeowners' association (HA). Based on a series of extensive field research visits in Shanghai from 2006 to 2012, it analyzes the contradictory rationales behind HA policies in Shanghai, and elaborates the debates between state actors and non‐state actors on the boundary of state intervention. It finds that the state in Shanghai has engaged multiple goals in its governance of the HAs: regularizing the real estate market, promoting self‐organization at the neighborhood level, and channeling homeowners' participation in urban politics. The neoliberal rationality of governing through subjects' autonomy and a tradition of the socialist discourse on party leadership co‐exist in the state's toolkit for governance. But the state's capacity to coordinate these different governing techniques varies across fields. I highlight the dilemma a non‐liberal state confronts in cultivating self‐organizing and self‐responsible individuals. This contrasts with some of the studies on ‘China's neoliberal state’, which argue that the bureaucratic system has been resilient in coping with the contradictions and imbalances inherent in neoliberalism.     

论封建制民主——菲律宾的民主模式及其在发展中国家的普遍性

地主与民主之间的关系是民主研究的重要维度。既有结构主义路径和理性选择路径总体上认为地主是不利于民主化的社会力量。但是,菲律宾地主与民主的共生关系却对传统理论提出了挑战。西班牙和美国的殖民统治通过经济和政治的双重赋权,将土地私有制和自由民主制引入了菲律宾,由此产生的地主精英通过竞争性选举获得政治权力来维护和平衡阶级利益,从而实现了与民主的结合,形成了“封建制民主”。其内在机制是当民主的人民民主本质被改造为程序性的选举式民主时,民主反而成为保护支配阶级的一种工具。封建制民主是菲律宾陷入国家治理困境的重要原因。这一重大政治现象的理论启示在于,以竞争性选举为核心的自由主义民主的实质是保护私有产权,“自由民主”在实践上可以是资本主义属性的寡头政治,也可以是封建制属性的或其他属性的寡头政治,结果都会带来严重的社会不平等并导致治理困难。     

基于行动导向的高职文科专业毕业论文改革

调查表明,高职院校文科类专业的毕业论文普遍存在着学校重视与学生忽视的"落差"、毕业论文选题与岗位实践的"断层"和毕业论文指导"缺位"等问题。应确立实践导向的毕业论文工作理念,建立"三位一体"的毕业论文工作模式,完善毕业论文质量保障长效机制。     

Markets,Morals, or Wealth? Delusions of a Standardized Antitrust Value

Since the 1980s, courts have chosen corporate wealth generation as antitrust's sole value, justifying their choice under``Chicago School' economics, while abandoning counter-values like justice and democracy. The difficult consequences of``Chicago's' univocal corporate wealth generating ``value' are explored in this article, while a broader, multi-valued, antitrust alternative is discussed and proposed.     

Business Education,Values and Beliefs

The study was concerned with values, value systems and the beliefs of business students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. The study of values and values education in western societies is clearly different from the approach to a study of Asian values advocated by Lee Kuan Yew. We talk about integrity, idealism, honesty, fairness, altuism, justice, equity, freedom, but can we expect overseas students from different cultural backgrounds to have the same understanding of these concepts as students who have been raised in western society?

     

THE EMERGENCE OF LIBERAL SOCIALISM IN CONTINENTAL EUROPE1

Socialism has repeatedly failed to match the accomplishments of capitalism, and yet it refuses to die. At the beginning of the twenty‐first century, a new type of socialism, ‘liberal socialism’, is growing in Europe. The rise of liberal socialism has been marked by the erosion of two key institutions of capitalism, private property rights and the freedom of exchange. Unlike communism, which used brute force to replace private property rights and free exchange with state ownership and central planning, liberal socialism focuses on redistributing wealth, creating entitlement programmes, supporting labour unions and promoting ‘fair’ trade.     

The Economic Analysis Underlying the 'Third Way'

In this article we unpack the ‘black box’ of carbon offsetting through a critical examination of the technologies and techniques that create carbon credits. Drawing on empirical research of compliance (Clean Development Mechanism) and voluntary carbon offset markets, we highlight the diversity of technologies, techniques and devices involved in carbon offsetting, ranging from refrigerant plants to systems of calculation and audit. We suggest that polarised debates for and against offsetting do not adequately reflect the considerable variations between types of offset project and governance practices in the compliance and voluntary offset markets. Using conceptual insights from governmentality theory and science and technology studies we assess the tensions in making standard, fungible carbon credits. In conclusion, we suggest attention to the technologies and materiality of carbon offsetting allows a fresh perspective on somewhat entrenched debates about the advantages and disadvantages of offsetting.