The failed institutionalization of “complexity science”: A focus on the Santa Fe Institute’s legitimization strategy

2020 ◽  
pp. 007327532093829
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Li Vigni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
Present Article ◽  
The United States ◽  
Complexity Science ◽  
Santa Fe ◽  
Complexity Sciences ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Educational Field

“Complexity sciences” are an interdisciplinary and transnational domain of study that aims at modeling natural and social “complex systems.” They appeared in the 1970s in Europe and the United States, but were boosted in the mid-1980s by the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) under the formula of “science of complexity.” This small but famous institution is the object of the present article. According to their promissory ambitions and to the enthusiastic claims of some scientific journalists, complexity sciences were going to revolutionize all of knowledge and even private and public actors who had learned to master them. In the light of this, one would expect to observe a well-established and autonomous research and educational field, capable of reproducing itself through professional institutions. Yet this is not the case. To explain the paradox, I propose to combine different models of history and sociology of emergent and declining domains, in order to give account of the rise and failure of complexity sciences.

scholarly journals Crop Insurance and the New Deal Roots of Agricultural Financialization in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 648-680
Author(s):  
SHANE HAMILTON
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Risk Management ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Crop Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
American Agriculture

A range of private and public institutions emerged in the United States in the years before and after the Great Depression to help farmers confront the inherent uncertainty of agricultural production and marketing. This included a government-owned and operated insurance enterprise offering “all-risk” coverage to American farmers beginning in 1938. Crop insurance, initially developed as a social insurance program, was beset by pervasive problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. As managers and policy makers responded to those problems from the 1940s on, they reshaped federal crop insurance in ways that increasingly made the scheme a lever of financialization, a means of disciplining individual farmers to think of farming in abstract terms of risk management. Crop insurance became intertwined with important changes in the economic context of agriculture by the 1960s, including the emergence of the “technological treadmill,” permanently embedding financialized risk management into the political economy of American agriculture.

The North Caucasus in Contemporary U.S.-Russia Relations: Key Problems and Implications for the Future

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-166
Author(s):  
Maxim A. Suchkov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Present Article ◽  
The United States ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
The North ◽  
The Future ◽  
Boston Marathon ◽  
The U.S

The North Caucasus is a most significant but a least understood problem in contemporary U.S.-Russia relations. The United States as one of the prime pace-setters in the region shaped its own attitude towards Russia’s most volatile region. Over more than twenty years, Washington experienced at least three major stages in its “Caucasus strategy”, and each stage had its impact on the North Caucasus. Since the beginning, the two states stuck to conflicting narratives of developments in the region. With time, some of the assessments were re-evaluated, but some continue to impede cooperation on key security issues. The present article explores these phenomena and examines what implications major events like the 9/11 attacks, the Caucasus Emirate enlistment among top terrorist organisations, the Boston marathon bombings, etc. had for the U.S.-Russia joint efforts in fighting terrorism. It also assesses areas of potential disagreement in the North Caucasus between the two countries.

scholarly journals El colegio electoral y su historia: de los debates constitucionales a las elecciones de 2016 = The Electoral College and its History: From the Constitutional Debates to the 2016 Elections

2018 ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Pedro Francisco Ramos Josa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Political System ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
El Sistema ◽  
The Relationship

El presente artículo tiene por objeto analizar la finalidad y utilidad de la institución del Colegio Electoral en el sistema político de Estados Unidos. Para dicho propósito haré un repaso histórico de los orígenes constitucionales del Colegio Electoral, seguido de una descripción de su evolución a lo largo de más de 200 años de existencia, finalizando con un análisis de su influencia en el resultado de las últimas elecciones presidenciales del pasado 8 de noviembre de 2016. Por último, y teniendo en cuenta todo lo anterior, valoraré la relación entre el Colegio Electoral y la democracia estadounidense.It is the object of the present article to analyze the purpose and usefulness of the institution of the Electoral College in the United States political system. For that purpose I will make a historical review of the Electoral College constitutional origins, followed by a description of its evolution throughout more than 200 years of existence, to conclude with a review of the main arguments for and against the Electoral College. Finally, and bearing in mind the aforementioned, I will assess the relationship between the Electoral College and the American democracy.

scholarly journals Psychological Perspectives on Interrogation

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 927-955 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aldert Vrij ◽  
Christian A. Meissner ◽  
Ronald P. Fisher ◽  
Saul M. Kassin ◽  
Charles A. Morgan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Lie Detection ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Enhanced Interrogation ◽  
Speech Content

Proponents of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the United States have claimed that such methods are necessary for obtaining information from uncooperative terrorism subjects. In the present article, we offer an informed, academic perspective on such claims. Psychological theory and research shows that harsh interrogation methods are ineffective. First, they are likely to increase resistance by the subject rather than facilitate cooperation. Second, the threatening and adversarial nature of harsh interrogation is often inimical to the goal of facilitating the retrieval of information from memory and therefore reduces the likelihood that a subject will provide reports that are extensive, detailed, and accurate. Third, harsh interrogation methods make lie detection difficult. Analyzing speech content and eliciting verifiable details are the most reliable cues to assessing credibility; however, to elicit such cues subjects must be encouraged to provide extensive narratives, something that does not occur in harsh interrogations. Evidence is accumulating for the effectiveness of rapport-based information-gathering approaches as an alternative to harsh interrogations. Such approaches promote cooperation, enhance recall of relevant and reliable information, and facilitate assessments of credibility. Given the available evidence that torture is ineffective, why might some laypersons, policymakers, and interrogation personnel support the use of torture? We conclude our review by offering a psychological perspective on this important question.

The Arbitration Treaties and the Senate Amendments

1912 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 614-628
Author(s):  
William Cullen Dennis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Present Article ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fundamental Theory

Referring to the identic general arbitration treaties recently negotiated with Great Britain and France, President Taft remarks, in a recent magazine article: “They have amended the treaty in the Senate and have put in so many exceptions that really it is very doubtful whether the adoption of such a treaty will be a step forward.” It is the purpose of the present article to consider the Senate amendments to the arbitration treaties with a view to offering some suggestions upon the question which President Taft thus raises, namely, whether or not the exchange of ratifications and putting into effect of the general arbitration treaties with Great Britain and France, as amended by the Senate, will or will not be a step forward toward the goal of peace through justice. As a foundation for an intelligent discussion of this question it seems desirable to emphasize some points with regard to the purpose and fundamental theory of the treaties as originally drawn and the success with which this theory has been embodied in the language of the treaties. There appears to be one thing about which nearly all the friends of the treaties may be said to have agreed, that is, that the chief value of the treaties, as negotiated, was indirect and general, not immediate and definite as between the contracting parties. They were chiefly valuable, not because these particular treaties would prevent war between the signatory nations, for “war between the United States and England or the United States and France was inconceivable if not impossible.”

Medical Expenditures on and by Immigrant Populations in the United States: A Systematic Review

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lila Flavin ◽  
Leah Zallman ◽  
Danny McCormick ◽  
J. Wesley Boyd
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Health Care Policy ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Health Care Expenditures ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Health Insurance Markets ◽  
Private And Public

In health care policy debates, discussion centers around the often-misperceived costs of providing medical care to immigrants. This review seeks to compare health care expenditures of U.S. immigrants to those of U.S.-born individuals and evaluate the role which immigrants play in the rising cost of health care. We systematically examined all post-2000, peer-reviewed studies in PubMed related to health care expenditures by immigrants written in English in the United States. The reviewers extracted data independently using a standardized approach. Immigrants’ overall expenditures were one-half to two-thirds those of U.S.-born individuals, across all assessed age groups, regardless of immigration status. Per capita expenditures from private and public insurance sources were lower for immigrants, particularly expenditures for undocumented immigrants. Immigrant individuals made larger out-of-pocket health care payments compared to U.S.-born individuals. Overall, immigrants almost certainly paid more toward medical expenses than they withdrew, providing a low-risk pool that subsidized the public and private health insurance markets. We conclude that insurance and medical care should be made more available to immigrants rather than less so.

American myths of linguistic assimilation: A sociolinguistic rebuttal

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Daniel Erker ◽  
Ricardo Otheguy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Grammatical Subject ◽  
Domains Of Life ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Linguistic Behavior

Abstract This study examines the behavior of 331 Spanish speakers, 269 immigrants to the United States and sixty-two native-born individuals, through questionnaires and sociolinguistic interviews. Results show that increased US life experience correlates with expanded use of English in both private and public domains of life. Additionally, greater use of English co-exists with maintenance of fine-grained patterns of structured linguistic variation in Spanish, such that US-born speakers demonstrate remarkable similarity to the immigrant generation in their usage of three variables: (i) subject pronoun presence vs. absence, (ii) grammatical subject position, and (iii) syllable-final /s/. The co-occurence of increased use of English, on one hand, and intergenerational structural continuity in variable linguistic behavior in Spanish, on the other, challenges two misconceptions about Spanish in the United States: that (a) Spanish-speaking immigrants and their US-born children are unwilling or unable to learn English, and (b) regular use of English entails attrition and/or failed acquisition of Spanish. Neither of these views finds empirical support in our data. (Spanish in the United States, comparative variationist linguistics, subject personal pronouns, grammatical subject position, syllable final /s/, bilingualism)

Effect of Hospital Characteristics on Performance of Pediatric Digit Replantation in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neill Y. Li ◽  
Justin E. Kleiner ◽  
Edward J. Testa ◽  
Nicholas J. Lemme ◽  
Avi D. Goodman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Pediatric Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Teaching Hospitals ◽  
Level Of Evidence ◽  
Teaching Status ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Subsequent Revision ◽  
Privately Owned ◽  
Hospital Characteristics

Abstract Introduction Utilize a national pediatric database to assess whether hospital characteristics such as location, teaching status, ownership, or size impact the performance of pediatric digit replantation following traumatic digit amputation in the United States. Materials and Methods The Kid’s Inpatient Database (KID) was used to query pediatric traumatic digit amputations between 2000 and 2012. Ownership (private and public), teaching status (teaching and non-teaching), location (urban and rural), hospital type (general and children’s), and size (large and small-medium) characteristics were evaluated. Replantations were then divided into those that required subsequent revision replantation or amputation. Fisher’s exact tests and multivariable logistic regressions were performed with p <0.05 considered statistically significant. Results Overall, 1,015 pediatric patients were included for the digit replantation cohort. Hospitals that were privately owned, general, large, urban, or teaching had a significantly greater number of replantations than small-medium, rural, non-teaching, public, or children’s hospitals. Privately owned (odds ratio [OR]: 1.80; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.06–3.06; p = 0.03) and urban (OR: 2.29; 95% CI: 1.41–3.73; p = 0.005) hospitals were significantly more likely to perform replantation. Urban (OR: 4.02; 95% CI: 1.90–8.47; p = 0.0003) and teaching (OR: 2.11; 95% CI: 1.17–3.83; p = 0.014) hospitals were significantly more likely to perform a revision procedure following primary replantation. Conclusion Private and urban hospitals were significantly more likely to perform replantation, but urban and teaching hospitals carried a greater number of revision procedures following replantation. Despite risk of requiring revision, the treatment of pediatric digit amputations in private, urban, and teaching centers provide the greatest likelihood for an attempt at replantation in the pediatric population. The study shows Level of Evidence III.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document