1,720,957 research outputs found
Gambia continues to defy existing political norms on the African continent
No full textIsmaila Ceesay analyses the surprise defeat of President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia by Adama Barrow in the recent elections
Aligners, lovers and deceptors: aspirations and strategies of young urban hustlers in the Gambia
Get PDFThis study investigates young Gambians’ social and economic aspirations. It considers how
young Gambians’ aspirations are shaped and negotiated, and the strategies they employ to
achieve their objectives. Whilst existing research tends to view young Gambians’ social and
economic advancement through a lens of international migration, this study focuses on the
aspirations and strategies of those who find themselves in a state of ‘involuntary immobility’
– that is, an aspiration to migrate but the inability to do so. The study looks at how two groups
of young urban Gambians from low socio-economic backgrounds pursue local livelihoods.
Known as ‘beach hustlers’ and ‘chanters’, these youths take advantage of the resources of the
tourism sector and of opportunities provided by information and communication technologies
(ICT) in an attempt to fulfil their aspirations.
Drawing on data collected from multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2013
and 2014 in Kololi, the country’s main tourism hotspot on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, and
Brikama, where internet use in cybercafés has rapidly grown over the past two decades, I use
the cases of ‘beach hustlers’ and ‘chanters’ (cyber hustlers) to shed light on the life-trajectories
of young Gambians. I discuss how ‘beach hustlers’ take advantage of the Gambia’s booming
tourism industry by engaging in diverse informal economic activities. I then consider how
‘chanters’ accumulate wealth by employing various methods and ruses in their interactions
with toubabs (white westerners) through internet-mediated encounters.
This study shows that the majority of young Gambians who find it increasingly difficult to
migrate to the West pursue local livelihoods to fulfil their aspirations of social and economic
advancement. The aspirations and strategies of the hustlers in this study are shaped and
influenced by intervening social, cultural and religious obligations and expectations. The study
argues that the formation of Gambian hustlers’ aspirations is the result of an interplay between
familial and societal dynamics; such as generational and gender relations and reciprocal social
exchange, and personal desires of upward social mobility. The study further shows that the
strategies young Gambians employ are influenced by the structural constraints and
opportunities that appear in specific space–time conditions. By doing so, this study contributes
to the literature on the aspirations of urban youths in developing countries and the strategies
they employ to achieve them, and how young people experience and respond to conditions of
‘involuntary immobility’
From Bail Bondsmen to Risk Assessments: Assessing Kentucky\u27s Pretrial Release Approaches
Get PDFAs one of only four states that ban bail bond companies, Kentucky is an experiment in the “laboratory of democracy,” which is made even more interesting because the state has tried three different approaches to pretrial release—the Pre-1976 approach, the 1976 to 2011 approach, and the 2011 to present approach. An assessment of these approaches show s how state actions and inaction can affect the right to pretrial release and underscores the importance of adopting appropriate state pretrial release policies
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Public Financial Accountability in Pakistan : The Impact of PIFRA on Capacity
Get PDFThis paper highlights the capacity
enhancement support provided under the World Bank-financed
Pakistan Improvement of Financial Reporting and Auditing
(PIFRA) project and six lessons learned to be considered in
designing similar projects: (a) address capacity constraints
at every level, that is, individual, organizational, and
institutional, (b) avoid addressing an entire large country
in one project, (c) avoid introducing state-of-the art
technology in an environment of largely unskilled
professionals, (d) avoid too many project components, (e)
ensure ownership and commitment by the project agency, and
(f) ensure collaboration among donors
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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