scholarly journals The Case of Brazil

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 111-142

This article analyzes the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives of the Amazonian populations of Brazil. Following the social quality approach, it inquires into how COVID-19 intertwined with and reinforced underlying trends and inequalities in different life domains expressed in long-term societal complexities, urban–rural dynamics, and environmental transformations. The article finds that the pandemic, following coloniality of power patterns, has been instrumentalized as a necropolitical tool, and has disproportionately impacted certain peoples and territories based on ethnoracial bias. The collapse of the local health system in the State of Amazonas is a systemic burden, not serendipity. A dialogue is proposed between decolonial and social quality approaches to analyze, unveil, and denounce the interplay between the coloniality of power patterns in non-Western contexts.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-86
Author(s):  
Jaap Westbroek ◽  
Harry Nijhuis ◽  
Laurent van der Maesen

This article seeks to open a dialogue between physics, other natural sciences, and the human sciences. Part 1 questions time reversibility as a fundament of physics. This runs counter to the discourses of all other sciences, which do presume the irreversibility of time and the evolution of phenomena. Characteristics of evolution (time irreversibility, chance, evolvement of higher levels of organization) are explained according to the laws of thermodynamics. Evolutionary thermodynamics (ET) is launched as a new connecting concept. Part 2 explores interpretation of the human sciences in analogy with ET. Dialectical interaction between levels of organizational complexity is seen as a driving force in the evolution of nature, humans, and societies. The theory of social quality and the social quality approach (SQA) imply ontological (and epistemological) features with close affinity to elements of ET. Therefore, the SQA carries potentialities to stimulate border-crossing dialogue between the sciences.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolas Schopow ◽  
Georg Osterhoff ◽  
Nikolaus von Dercks ◽  
Felix Girrbach ◽  
Christoph Josten ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND During the COVID-19 pandemic, Central COVID-19 Coordination Centers (CCCC) have been established at several hospitals across Germany with the intention to assist local healthcare professionals in efficiently referring patients with suspected or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection to regional hospitals, and therefore to prevent the collapse of local health system structures. In addition, they coordinate interhospital transfers of COVID-19 patients and provide or arrange specialized telemedical consultations. OBJECTIVE This study describes the establishment and management of a CCCC at a German university hospital. METHODS We perform economic analyses (cost, cost-effectiveness, use and utility) according to the CHEERS criteria. Additionally, a systematic review was conducted to identify publications on similar institutions worldwide. RESULTS The two months with the highest local incidence (12/2020 and 01/2021) of COVID-19 cases were considered. During this time, 17.3 requests per day were made to CCCC regarding admission or transfer of COVID-19 patients. The majority of requests was made by emergency medical services (56.3%), patients with an average age of 71.8 years were involved and 69.0% of cases had already positive PCR detection. In 59.8% of the concerning patients, further treatment by the general practitioner or outpatient presentation in a hospital could be initiated after appropriate advice, 27.2% of patients were admitted to normal wards and 12.9% were directly transmitted to an intensive care unit. The operating costs of the CCCC amounted to more than €52,000 per month. 90.4% of all patients presented to the hospital were triaged and announced in advance by the CCCC. No other published economic analysis of COVID-19 coordination or management institutions at hospitals could be found. CONCLUSIONS Despite the high cost of the CCCC, we were able to show that it is a beneficial concept to both the providing hospital and the public health system. However, the most important benefit of the CCCC is that it prevents hospitals from being overrun by patients and that it avoids situations in which doctors have to weigh up one patient’s life against another´s.


2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Forbes ◽  
Brett Inder ◽  
Sunitha Raman

On any given night in Victoria, around 4,000 children and young people live under the care and protection of the State. For many young people, this care extends over a long period of time, sometimes until their 18th birthday. It is well documented that young people leaving State care often lack the social and economic resources to assist them in making the transition into independent living. As a consequence, the long-term life outcomes from this group are frequently very poor. A recent report from the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare in partnership with Monash University estimated that, for a typical cohort of 450 young people who leave care in Victoria each year, the direct cost to the State resulting from these poor outcomes is $332.5 million. The estimated average outcomes of the leaving care population are based on a recent survey involving sixty young people who had spent at least two years in care as teenagers. This paper provides an overview of the economic methodology used to estimate this cost, and provides discussion of the motivation for measuring outcomes in terms of costs to the State.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeriy Heyets

Nearly 30 years of transformation of the sociopolitical and legal, socioeconomical and financial, sociocultural and welfare, and socioenvironmental dimensions in both Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, has led to a change of the social quality of daily circumstances. On the one hand, the interconnection and reciprocity of these four relevant dimensions of societal life is the underlying cause of such changes, and on the other, the state as main actor of the sociopolitical and legal dimension is the initiator of those changes. Applying the social quality approach, I will reflect in this article on the consequences of these changes, especially in Ukraine. In comparison, the dominant Western interpretation of the “welfare state” will also be discussed.


1984 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juris Dreifelds

For most North Americans demography is an esoteric subject more often tied to marketing than to social and political changes. In Latvia, as in most of Eastern Europe and the USSR, demography has long been placed on the forefront of public attention. This wave of attention in the case of Latvia is not a fad of short duration which will be readily displaced by other popular topics. On the contrary, demography has had, is having and will have a tremendous impact on a very broad range of policies and on the long term survival of the Latvian nation. Thus, in order to understand the social and ethnic tensions, the labour squeeze, and the welfare burden of Latvia, it is necessary to understand the multifaceted demographic processes: the real matrix of the political and social environment. This paper reviews the pivotal demographic role of the First and Second World Wars and analyzes population size, sex balance, age structure, urban-rural residence, nuptiality, birth and death rates, migration patterns and ethnic balance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 2322-2337
Author(s):  
Maria Carolina Chaves de Sousa ◽  
Peter Mann de Toledo ◽  
Filipe Gomes Dias

At the beginning of the 20th century, urbanization and occupation of privileged spaces at the expense of “lowland” spaces and close to a floodplain. The “lowlands” were occupied by a population, mostly with socioeconomic needs, forming housing groups susceptible to flooding and flooding. To bring the recognition of rights to these occupants, a land regularization work was carried out by the Federal University of Pará - UFPA, together with public entities from the State and the Union. The article aims to present and compare the degree of socio-environmental vulnerability in the area of land C of UFPA in the municipality of Belém, object of land regularization activity, applying indicators and indices related to social, economic, legal and environmental issues. The results show that the degree of vulnerability is high in the years surveyed, concluding that the legal regularization work carried out in the area was only patrimonial, in order to transfer responsibilities for land use to the beneficiary residents and the recognition of the right of that title by law. . Effective land regularization work should involve a set of bodies responsible for the social, environmental, urban and land areas so that, in a concatenated and long-term manner, the work carried out is carried out so that the results are captured by the indicators and that the data decrease the degree of socio-environmental vulnerability in the studied area.


2020 ◽  

Historically, crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted politicians to break up dead-locked structures and implement far-reaching reforms. Path dependencies can be interrupted in times of crisis. This volume examines the social impact of the current pandemic as well as both the long-term challenges it poses and the potential it offers from the perspective of economic and business ethics. How has the COVID-19 crisis changed the balance of power between the state, markets and business? What are the obligations of companies during a pandemic? To what extent are the fight against the coronavirus crisis and that against the climate crisis compatible? What role can and should business ethics play in times of crisis? With contributions by Prof. Dr. Michael S. Aßländer; Prof. Dr. Jörg Althammer; Prof. Dr. Martin Büscher; Niklas Dummer, M.A.; Dr. habil. Michael Ehret; Miriam Fink; Prof. Dr. Manfred Fischedick; Prof. Dr. Nils Goldschmidt; Prof. Dr. Hanns-Stephan Haas; PD Dr. Michaela Haase; Prof. Dr. Ludger Heidbrink; Prof. Dr. Ulrich Hemel; Prof. Dr. Lars Hochmann; Ruzana Liburkina, M.A.; Mark McAdam; Prof. em. Dietmar Mieth; Prof. Dr. Dr. Elmar Nass; Dr. Laura Otto; Prof. Dr. Reinhard Pfriem; Prof. Dr. Ingo Pies; Prof. em. Birger Priddat; Frauke Remmers; Dr. Bastian Ronge; Prof. Dr. Hartmut Rosa; Prof. em. Hermann Sautter; Dr. Philipp Schepelmann; Prof. Dr. Dr. Ulrich Schmidt; Prof. Dr. Markus Scholz; Prof. Dr. Andreas Suchanek; Prof. em. Peter Ulrich


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
Varhese Joy

This is a review of the concept corporate sustainability. Being the most widely discussed and deliberated topic in the management and corporate literature, this concept has been defined by many academic scholars with their own specific approach. This article makes an attempt to review these approaches and will examine them in the context of the principles of the social quality approach (SQA). The progress and relevance of the United Nation’s 2030 sustainable development is also reviewed. The conceptual and methodological redefinition given by SQA scholars and the reasons for their rejection of the tripartite approach to defining sustainability provided in the UN Brundtland Report is also discussed in order to provide a basis for further research into the issue of sustainability and how it relates to the SQA.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document