Ni una más. International cooperation against gender-based discrimination: the femicide case in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico

The femicide in Ciudad Juárez is a story made of extreme violence against women for different reasons, by different actors, under different circumstances, and following different behavioural patterns. All within a gender discrimination frame based on the idea that women are inferior, interchangeable and disposable according to the patriarchal hierarchy still present in Mexico, but strongly reinforced by a sort of conspiracy of silence provoked either by the high impunity rate, the governmental incompetence to solve the crimes, or the general indifference of the population. It is the story of hundreds of kidnapped, raped, in many cases tortured, and murdered young women in the border between Mexico and the United States. The murders first came into light in 1993 and up to now young women continue to “disappear” without any hope of bringing the perpetrators to justice, stopping impunity, convicting the assassins, and bringing justice to the families of the deceased girls and women. The main questions about femicide in Ciudad Juárez seem to be: why were they brutally assassinated?, why most of the crimes have not been solved yet?, why and how is Ciudad Juárez different from other border cities with the same characteristics?, which powers are behind those crimes in a city that implies mainly women as its labor force, and which has the lowest unemployment rate in the whole country? But there are also many other questions dealing more with the context, the Juarences’ lifestyles, the eventual hidden powers behind the crimes, the possible murderers’ reasons, the response of the local civil society, or the international community actions to fight against femicide there, among many other things, that are still waiting for an answer and that this paper will ‘narrate’ in order to provide a holistic panorama for the readers. But above all there is the need to remember that every single woman or girl assassinated there had a name, an identity, a family, a story to be told time after time and as many times as necessary, in order to avoid accepting these crimes just as statistics, as cold numbers that might make us forget the human tragedy that has been flagellating the city since 1993. We must remember as well that their deaths express gender oppression, the inequality of the relations between what is male and what is female, a manifestation of domination, terror, social extermination, patriarchal hegemony, social class and impunity. The city is the perfect mirror where all the contradictions of globalization get reflected. It is there where all the globalization evils are present and survive by sucking their women’s blood. It is a city where some concepts such as gender, migration and power are closely related with a negative connotation.

Evolutionary methods for self-organizing cooperation in peer-to-peer networks

The Peer-to-Peer network paradigm is drawing the attention of both final users and researchers for its features. P2P networks shift from the classic client-server approach to a high level of decentralization where there is no central control and all the nodes should be able not only to require services, but to provide them to other peers as well. While on one hand such high level of decentralization might lead to interesting properties like scalability and fault tolerance, on the other hand it implies many new problems to deal with. A key feature of many P2P systems is openness, meaning that everybody is potentially able to join a network with no need for subscription or payment systems. The combination of openness and lack of central control makes it feasible for a user to free-ride, that is to increase its own benefit by using services without allocating resources to satisfy other peers’ requests. One of the main goals when designing a P2P system is therefore to achieve cooperation between users. Given the nature of P2P systems based on simple local interactions of many peers having partial knowledge of the whole system, an interesting way to achieve desired properties on a system scale might consist in obtaining them as emergent properties of the many interactions occurring at local node level. Two methods are typically used to face the problem of cooperation in P2P networks: 1) engineering emergent properties when designing the protocol; 2) study the system as a game and apply Game Theory techniques, especially to find Nash Equilibria in the game and to reach them making the system stable against possible deviant behaviors. In this work we present an evolutionary framework to enforce cooperative behaviour in P2P networks that is alternative to both the methods mentioned above. Our approach is based on an evolutionary algorithm inspired by computational sociology and evolutionary game theory, consisting in having each peer periodically trying to copy another peer which is performing better. The proposed algorithms, called SLAC and SLACER, draw inspiration from tag systems originated in computational sociology, the main idea behind the algorithm consists in having low performance nodes copying high performance ones. The algorithm is run locally by every node and leads to an evolution of the network both from the topology and from the nodes’ strategy point of view. Initial tests with a simple Prisoners’ Dilemma application show how SLAC is able to bring the network to a state of high cooperation independently from the initial network conditions. Interesting results are obtained when studying the effect of cheating nodes on SLAC algorithm. In fact in some cases selfish nodes rationally exploiting the system for their own benefit can actually improve system performance from the cooperation formation point of view. The final step is to apply our results to more realistic scenarios. We put our efforts in studying and improving the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent was chosen not only for its popularity but because it has many points in common with SLAC and SLACER algorithms, ranging from the game theoretical inspiration (tit-for-tat-like mechanism) to the swarms topology. We discovered fairness, meant as ratio between uploaded and downloaded data, to be a weakness of the original BitTorrent protocol and we drew inspiration from the knowledge of cooperation formation and maintenance mechanism derived from the development and analysis of SLAC and SLACER, to improve fairness and tackle freeriding and cheating in BitTorrent. We produced an extension of BitTorrent called BitFair that has been evaluated through simulation and has shown the abilities of enforcing fairness and tackling free-riding and cheating nodes.

The social construction of cooperation: exchange, identification and collective intentions within the organization

My aim is to develop a theory of cooperation within the organization and empirically test it. Drawing upon social exchange theory, social identity theory, the idea of collective intentions, and social constructivism, the main assumption of my work implies that both cooperation and the organization itself are continually shaped and restructured by actions, judgments, and symbolic interpretations of the parties involved. Therefore, I propose that the decision to cooperate, expressed say as an intention to cooperate, reflects and depends on a three step social process shaped by the interpretations of the actors involved. The first step entails an instrumental evaluation of cooperation in terms of social exchange. In the second step, this “social calculus” is translated into cognitive, emotional and evaluative reactions directed toward the organization. Finally, once the identification process is completed and membership awareness is established, I propose that individuals will start to think largely in terms of “We” instead of “I”. Self-goals are redefined at the collective level, and the outcomes for self, others, and the organization become practically interchangeable. I decided to apply my theory to an important cooperative problem in management research: knowledge exchange within organizations. Hence, I conducted a quantitative survey among the members of the virtual community, “www.borse.it” (n=108). Within this community, members freely decide to exchange their knowledge about the stock market among themselves. Because of the confirmatory requirements and the structural complexity of the theory proposed (i.e., the proposal that instrumental evaluations will induce social identity and this in turn will causes collective intentions), I use Structural Equation Modeling to test all hypotheses in this dissertation. The empirical survey-based study found support for the theory of cooperation proposed in this dissertation. The findings suggest that an appropriate conceptualization of the decision to exchange knowledge is one where collective intentions depend proximally on social identity (i.e., cognitive identification, affective commitment, and evaluative engagement) with the organization, and this identity depends on instrumental evaluations of cooperators (i.e., perceived value of the knowledge received, assessment of past reciprocity, expected reciprocity, and expected social outcomes of the exchange). Furthermore, I find that social identity fully mediates the effects of instrumental motives on collective intentions.

La dimensione esterna della politica migratoria dell'UE

Conformemente ai trattati, l'UE sviluppa una politica comune in materia di asilo, immigrazione e controllo delle frontiere esterne, fondata sulla solidarietà e sul rispetto dei diritti fondamentali e, a tal fine, avvia relazioni strategiche con i Paesi terzi e le Organizzazioni internazionali. Un fenomeno “senza frontiere”, quale quello migratorio, esige del resto un'azione coerente e coordinata sia sul piano interno sia su quello esterno. La messa in atto di quest'ultima, tuttavia, si scontra con difficoltà di rilievo. Innanzitutto, l'UE e i suoi Stati membri devono creare i presupposti per l'avvio della collaborazione internazionale, vale a dire stimolare la fiducia reciproca con i Paesi terzi, rafforzando la propria credibilità internazionale. A tal fine, le istituzioni, gli organi e gli organismi dell'UE e gli Stati membri devono impegnarsi a fornire un modello coerente di promozione dei valori fondanti, quali la solidarietà e il rispetto dei diritti fondamentali, nonché a coordinare le proprie iniziative, per individuare, insieme ai Paesi terzi e alle Organizzazioni internazionali, una strategia d'azione comune. In secondo luogo, l'UE e gli Stati membri devono adottare soluzioni volte a promuovere l'efficacia della collaborazione internazionale e, più precisamente, assicurare che la competenza esterna sia esercitata dal livello di governo in grado di apportare il valore aggiunto e utilizzare la forma collaborativa di volta in volta più adeguata alla realizzazione degli obiettivi previsti. In definitiva, l'azione esterna dell'UE in materia di politica migratoria necessita di una strategia coerente e flessibile. Se oggi la coerenza è garantita dalla giustiziabilità dei principi di solidarietà, di rispetto dei diritti fondamentali e, giustappunto, di coerenza, la flessibilità si traduce nel criterio del valore aggiunto che, letto in combinato disposto con il principio di leale cooperazione, si pone al centro del nuovo modello partenariale proposto dall'approccio globale, potenzialmente idoneo a garantire la gestione efficace del fenomeno migratorio.

Evidence-based polytherapies and long-term mortality after acute myocardial infarction in very old subjects compared with elderly and adults: a nested case-control study

Background: Clinical trials have demonstrated that selected secondary prevention medications for patients after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) reduce mortality. Yet, these medications are generally underprescribed in daily practice, and older people are often absent from drug trials. Objectives: To examine the relationship between adherence to evidence-based (EB) drugs and post-AMI mortality, focusing on the effects of single therapy and polytherapy in very old patients (≥80 years) compared with elderly and adults (<80 years). Methods: Patients hospitalised for AMI between 01/01/2008 and 30/06/2011 and resident in the Local Health Authority of Bologna were followed up until 31/12/2011. Medication adherence was calculated as the proportion of days covered for filled prescriptions of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs)/angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), β-blockers, antiplatelet drugs, and statins. We adopted a risk set sampling method, and the adjusted relationship between medication adherence (PDC≥75%) and mortality was investigated using conditional multiple logistic regression. Results: The study population comprised 4861 patients. During a median follow-up of 2.8 years, 1116 deaths (23.0%) were observed. Adherence to the 4 EB drugs was 7.1%, while nonadherence to any of the drugs was 19.7%. For both patients aged ≥80 years and those aged <80 years, rate ratios of death linearly decreased as the number of EB drugs taken increased. There was a significant inverse relationship between adherence to each of 4 medications and mortality, although its magnitude was higher for ACEIs/ARBs (adj. rate ratio=0.60, 95%CI=0.52–0.69) and statins (0.60, 0.50–0.72), and lower for β-blockers (0.75, 0.61–0.92) and antiplatelet drugs (0.73, 0.63–0.84). Conclusions: The beneficial effect of EB polytherapy on long-term mortality following AMI is evident also in nontrial older populations. Given that adherence to combination therapies is largely suboptimal, the implementation of strategies and initiatives to increase the use of post-AMI secondary preventive medications in old patients is crucial.

The engagement of yugoslav technical cooperation experts in post-colonial Algeria (1962-1990). A global microhistory of east-south relations

The venture of socialist Eastern Europe in assisting the development efforts of the post-colonial countries opened up official migratory channels to the Global South for a specific labour group engaged under international technical cooperation programmes. By taking post-colonial Algeria as a space of East-South interactions and intense inter-socialist competition, the thesis studies labour mobility from socialist Yugoslavia of a heterogeneous group labelled “technical cooperation experts” in the period from 1962 to 1990. While CMEA members dispatched to the country personnel in great numbers, after 1965, Yugoslavia failed to do so. Tracing them beyond the institutional level, the thesis aims at detecting and exposing factors which inhibited the attempts to increase the presence of Yugoslav technical experts in Algeria. It argues that instead of building an alternative, solidarity-based aid model, Yugoslav technical cooperation with the developing countries was reduced to mediation in the employment of highly-skilled labour abroad. The cooperation scheme, which differed from one of its Eastern European counterparts, manifested in the employment and legal status as well as everyday life and work experiences of Yugoslav citizens. Relying on the methodological approach of global microhistory, which strongly favours the micro-historical analysis of primary sources in studying global processes, the thesis provides a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of Yugoslav globalization endeavours. By shifting the focus to the experiences of ordinary people who were under the strong influence of globalization forces of the Cold War era, the thesis adds a “human” dimension to the history of East-South relations.