The economic impact of sports mega-events : The case study of the FIS Nordic World Ski Championship Falun 2015

Since the second half of 1990s, the economic impact of sports mega-events concerned the researchers, the public and the professionals. The investment of public funds and the effects on several sectors of the economy motivate the economic impact studies. The economic impact of the FIS Nordic World Ski Championship Falun 2015 to the region of Dalarna is the topic of this thesis. This requires the calculation of direct, indirect and induced economic impact. Within the analysis, data from a questionnaire survey conducted on seven different days during the event are used. The final sample of the analysis contains 893 observations. The segmentation approach was applied for the calculations and the visitors were classified regarding their choice of accommodation. The regional economic impact is calculated at 321 M SEK and the employment effect on the tourism sector is estimated. However, the lack of information limits the study. The analysis could be extended with an accurate investigation of certain issues. Further, the impact of the event should be estimated from all the perspectives. The organization of sports mega-events creates tangible and intangible effects to the host-city. The thesis reviews literature on the economic impact studies of sports mega-events. The results of the study can be used for a comprehensive analysis of the case study. Further, the professionals of the tourism and the event could be benefited.

La spiritualité dans le cinéma transnational. Une théologie pour le 21e siècle autour des philosophies du cinéma de Gilles Deleuze et de Stanley Cavell

Cette recherche part d’un double intérêt. Pour la spiritualité, dont on entend beaucoup parler dans un 21e siècle inquiet et en quête de nouveaux repères. Et pour le cinéma, ou 7e art, phénomène culturel phare des temps modernes, qui reflète abondamment les problématiques et questionnements du monde. À une époque où on observe une tendance à l’homogénéisation culturelle, résultat de la mondialisation économique, cette thèse traite du « cinéma transnational ». Elles aussi, les œuvres de ce cinéma traversent l’espace planétaire, mais tout en conservant un solide ancrage local et une singularité artistique. Ce sont en bonne partie les films que l’on retrouve dans les festivals internationaux, tels Cannes, Venise et Berlin. Le cinéma traduisant toutes les interrogations possibles du présent, plusieurs films apparaissent donc porteurs d’un questionnement à portée spirituelle. Et ce, avec des moyens non discursifs, propres à l’art cinématographique. Ils invitent aussi à la rencontre de l’autre. L’objectif de la thèse consiste à décrire comment, par l’analyse d’une douzaine de films transnationaux, on peut dégager de nouveaux concepts sur la façon avec laquelle se vit la spiritualité à notre époque, en relation avec l’autre, et pourquoi cette spiritualité s’accompagne nécessairement de considérations éthiques. Pour accomplir cette tâche, la thèse s’appuie sur les travaux de deux philosophes, Gilles Deleuze (France) et Stanley Cavell (États-Unis), qui ont marqué les études cinématographiques au cours des dernières décennies, par des approches jugées complémentaires pour cette recherche. Le premier a développé sa pensée à partir de ce qui distingue le cinéma des autres arts, et le second, à partir de l’importance du cinéma pour les spectateurs et les spectatrices. Enfin, la thèse se veut une théologie, ou pensée théologico-philosophique, indépendante d’une tradition religieuse et au diapason des réalités du 21e siècle.

No la toques más, Sam : algunas notas sobre Adorno y el cine

En este artículo se trata de apuntar algunas de las líneas fundamentales que guían la crítica que Th.W. Adorno llevó a cabo sobre el mundo cinematográfico en vinculación a su reflexión sobre la industria cultural. Adorno abordó el cine desde múltiples perspectivas, que van desde el ámbito musicológico (gracias a su trabajo colaborativo con Hanns Eisler) hasta el sociológico (relacionado con textos tan importantes como Dialéctica de la Ilustración, que escribió a cuatro manos con Max Horkheimer). Uno de los objetivos de este artículo es el de relativizar la extendida idea del disgusto que le produjo el cine al filósofo alemán, tratando de justificar su postura con respecto al séptimo arte en el contexto de su obra completa.

Symbiotic Cities: Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Mass Culture, 1910-1960

This dissertation examines how Buenos Aires emerged as a creative capital of mass culture and cultural industries in South America during a period when Argentine theater and cinema expanded rapidly, winning over a regional marketplace swelled by transatlantic immigration, urbanization and industrialization. I argue that mass culture across the River Plate developed from a singular dynamic of exchange and competition between Buenos Aires and neighboring Montevideo. The study focuses on the Argentine, Uruguayan, and international performers, playwrights, producers, cultural impresarios, critics, and consumers who collectively built regional cultural industries. The cultural industries in this region blossomed in the interwar period as the advent of new technologies like sound film created profitable opportunities for mass cultural production and new careers for countless theater professionals. Buenos Aires also became a global cultural capital in the wider Hispanic Atlantic world, as its commercial culture served a region composed largely of immigrants and their descendants. From the 1920s through the 1940s, Montevideo maintained a subordinate but symbiotic relationship with Buenos Aires. The two cities shared interlinked cultural marketplaces that attracted performers and directors from the Atlantic world to work in theatre and film productions, especially in times of political upheaval such as the Spanish Civil War and the Perón era in Argentina. As a result of this transnational process, Argentine mass culture became widely consumed throughout South America, competing successfully with Hollywood, European, and other Latin American cinemas and helping transform Buenos Aires into a cosmopolitan metropolis. By examining the relationship between regional and national frames of cultural production, my dissertation contributes to the fields of Latin American studies and urban history while seeking to de-center the United States and Europe from the central framing of transnational history.

A cyber exercise post assessment framework: In Malaysia perspectives

Critical infrastructures are based on complex systems that provide vital services to the nation. The complexities of the interconnected networks, each managed by individual organisations, if not properly secured, could offer vulnerabilities that threaten other organisations’ systems that depend on their services. This thesis argues that the awareness of interdependencies among critical sectors needs to be increased. Managing and securing critical infrastructure is not isolated responsibility of a government or an individual organisation. There is a need for a strong collaboration among critical service providers of public and private organisations in protecting critical information infrastructure. Cyber exercises have been incorporated in national cyber security strategies as part of critical information infrastructure protection. However, organising a cyber exercise involved multi sectors is challenging due to the diversity of participants’ background, working environments and incidents response policies. How well the lessons learned from the cyber exercise and how it can be transferred to the participating organisations is still a looming question. In order to understand the implications of cyber exercises on what participants have learnt and how it benefits participants’ organisation, a Cyber Exercise Post Assessment (CEPA) framework was proposed in this research. The CEPA framework consists of two parts. The first part aims to investigate the lessons learnt by participants from a cyber exercise using the four levels of the Kirkpatrick Training Model to identify their perceptions on reaction, learning, behaviour and results of the exercise. The second part investigates the Organisation Cyber Resilience (OCR) of participating sectors. The framework was used to study the impact of the cyber exercise called X Maya in Malaysia. Data collected through interviews with X Maya 5 participants were coded and categorised based on four levels according to the Kirkpatrick Training Model, while online surveys distributed to ten Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) sectors participated in the exercise. The survey used the C-Suite Executive Checklist developed by World Economic Forum in 2012. To ensure the suitability of the tool used to investigate the OCR, a reliability test conducted on the survey items showed high internal consistency results. Finally, individual OCR scores were used to develop the OCR Maturity Model to provide the organisation cyber resilience perspectives of the ten CNII sectors.

Perspectives esthétique et compositionnelle d’une dialectique entre le son et la musique

Visant à contribuer à la pérennité de la musique d’art instrumentale, cette thèse aborde plusieurs sujets la concernant, autant sur les plans théorique et esthétique que pratique et compositionnel. Les deux principaux contextes observés sont ceux de la modernité et de l’économie de marché. Le premier, par le triomphe de la raison technicienne, aurait conduit à l’autonomie de l’art désormais confronté aux risques de l’autoréférence. Le deuxième, par la pression exercée sur le compositeur à la base de la chaîne création-production-diffusion, compromettrait cette autonomie qu’elle avait pourtant contribuée à rendre possible. Or, l’autonomie de l’art, en tant que conquête sur les plans esthétique, social, politique, économique et intellectuel, représente un enjeu de taille, puisque d’éventuelles compromissions envers des impératifs extérieurs impliquent un recul sur tous ces plans. Pour répondre à cette problématique, la thèse explore des pistes de réflexions et d’opérations pour réaffirmer – en le revendiquant – ce que la musique d’art possède en propre et qui mérite encore d’être entendu, militant ainsi pour la survie de ce qui la rend possible. Plus précisément, la dialectique du son et de la musique que je développe ici me permet, dans un premier temps, d’aborder les médiations successives conduisant des ondes mécaniques à se structurer dans notre conscience jusqu’à se transmettre à nous sous forme de patrimoine; puis, dans un deuxième temps, de décrire ma propre intention de communication par la musique en analysant deux œuvres de ma composition : Musique d’art pour quintette à cordes et Musique d’art pour orchestre de chambre II (partie 1.). Musique d’art pour quintette à cordes est une œuvre-concert de soixante-cinq minutes pour quatuor à cordes et contrebasse, spatialisation, traitement et mise en espace des musiciens. Il s’agit d’un projet de recherche-création de mon initiative que j’ai aussi mené à titre de producteur. Musique d’art pour orchestre de chambre II (partie 1.) est une œuvre de commande de quatorze minutes. Le retour critique portant sur l’ensemble des composantes caractéristiques du média ouvre la voie à une corrélation plus étroite entre son contenu et sa forme privilégiée de présentation, le concert. Cette corrélation peut amener le public à désirer visiter les œuvres et apprécier leur signification, préservant la musique d’art comme mode spécifique de connaissance du monde.

La spiritualité dans le cinéma transnational. Une théologie pour le 21e siècle autour des philosophies du cinéma de Gilles Deleuze et de Stanley Cavell

Cette recherche part d’un double intérêt. Pour la spiritualité, dont on entend beaucoup parler dans un 21e siècle inquiet et en quête de nouveaux repères. Et pour le cinéma, ou 7e art, phénomène culturel phare des temps modernes, qui reflète abondamment les problématiques et questionnements du monde. À une époque où on observe une tendance à l’homogénéisation culturelle, résultat de la mondialisation économique, cette thèse traite du « cinéma transnational ». Elles aussi, les œuvres de ce cinéma traversent l’espace planétaire, mais tout en conservant un solide ancrage local et une singularité artistique. Ce sont en bonne partie les films que l’on retrouve dans les festivals internationaux, tels Cannes, Venise et Berlin. Le cinéma traduisant toutes les interrogations possibles du présent, plusieurs films apparaissent donc porteurs d’un questionnement à portée spirituelle. Et ce, avec des moyens non discursifs, propres à l’art cinématographique. Ils invitent aussi à la rencontre de l’autre. L’objectif de la thèse consiste à décrire comment, par l’analyse d’une douzaine de films transnationaux, on peut dégager de nouveaux concepts sur la façon avec laquelle se vit la spiritualité à notre époque, en relation avec l’autre, et pourquoi cette spiritualité s’accompagne nécessairement de considérations éthiques. Pour accomplir cette tâche, la thèse s’appuie sur les travaux de deux philosophes, Gilles Deleuze (France) et Stanley Cavell (États-Unis), qui ont marqué les études cinématographiques au cours des dernières décennies, par des approches jugées complémentaires pour cette recherche. Le premier a développé sa pensée à partir de ce qui distingue le cinéma des autres arts, et le second, à partir de l’importance du cinéma pour les spectateurs et les spectatrices. Enfin, la thèse se veut une théologie, ou pensée théologico-philosophique, indépendante d’une tradition religieuse et au diapason des réalités du 21e siècle.

Requirements for the use of virtual worlds in corporate training : perspectives from the post-mortem of a corporate e-learning provider approach of Second Life and OpenSimulator

Between 2009 and 2011, a joint academia-industry effort took place to integrate Second Life and OpenSimulator platforms into a corporate elearning provider’s learning management platform. The process involved managers and lead developers at the provider and an academic engineering research team. We performed content analysis on the documents produced in this process, seeking data on the corporate perspective of requirements for virtual world platforms to be usable in everyday practice. In this paper, we present the requirements found in the documents, and detail how they emerged and evolved throughout the process.

The Road to Bali: ERIA Perspectives on the WTO Ministerial and Asian Integration

The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) forthcoming Ninth Ministerial Conference in Bali comes at a critical juncture for the multilateral trade body, long mired in the Doha Round stalemate. Beyond offering a critical first test at consensus-building and institutional renewal, the Bali Ministerial affords a unique opportunity to gauge contrasting perceptions across ASEAN and East Asian countries of the continued relevance of the WTO to trade and economic governance within the region and beyond. Resulting from the collaborative efforts of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), the Universitas Pelita Harapan (UPH) and the World Trade Institute at the University of Bern (WTI), this policy research initiative offers comparative scholarship on some of the key questions arising from the forthcoming WTO Ministerial gathering from an East Asian perspective. Specifically, it explores what scholars in the region expect the Bali Ministerial to produce by way of tangible outcomes and whether the Ministerial will restore the momentum needed to bring the Doha Round to a successful conclusion. Contributors also investigate how relevant the WTO remains to the multiple processes of deepening economic integration in ASEAN and East Asia (e.g. AEC, TPP, RCEP) and, importantly, what lessons in rule-design and market opening WTO Members could usefully draw from the ongoing march towards the establishment of an ASEAN Economic Community.

The Preferential Liberalization of Trade in Services: African Perspectives And Challenges

This chapter takes stock of the state of play of preferential trade negotiations in services in Africa. It explores the factors that lie behind the reluctance of African governments to bind service sector policy under international treaties. The chapter chronicles several ongoing initiatives aimed at deepening intra-regional trade and investment among the eight regional economic cooperation areas found on the continent. It also describes external liberalization efforts engaging Africa with the rest of the world in services trade, devoting particular attention to negotiations underway with the European Community (EC) with a view to concluding WTO-compatible Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The chapter draws attention to several novel features of the EC-CARIFORUM EPA in the services field and discusses its possible implications for Africa’s ongoing processes of integration in services markets at both the intra- and extra-regional levels. The chapter concludes with a broader discussion of a range of policy challenges confronting African governments in designing development-enhancing strategies of engagement in services trade negotiations.

New silk road : trade and investment. perspectives for eu and new partnerships

China has already given a fundamental contribution to the present globalization process and have also highly benefited from it by integrating becoming the final stage of the Global Chains Production networks in Asia. This process in China was the result of a survival economic strategy that saw in the attraction of Foreign Direct Investment in intensive low cost workmanship oriented to exports, a fundamental condition to overpass it´s millenary delay. This strategy accepted that the add value that remain in China, although very small was very important to give jobs to millions of Chinese and take them out of the absolute poverty line where they were in 1978 when Deng Xiao Ping launch the 4 Modernizations and the Open Door Policies. Other policies token during the first 30 years of the China Economic Reform, like the Grasp the Big Let Go the Small, the Socialist Market Economy, the Go West and the Go Global were equally important transforming Chinese economy in the second world biggest one. This first globalization stage had its big push in 2001 when China joined the WTO we can say that a new world economic order had begun in that date, placing China in the center of the world.

Blessed are the Peacemakers: Transnational Alliance, Protective Accompaniment and the Presbyterian Church of Colombia

The purpose of this thesis was to explore how Christian networks enable strategies of transnational alliance, whereby groups in different nations strive to strengthen one another’s leverage and credibility in order to resolve conflicts and elaborate new possibilities. This research does so by analyzing the case of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia (IPC). The project examines the historical development of the IPC from the initial missionary period of the 1850s until the present. Specifically, the purpose of the study was to consider how the historical struggle to articulate autonomy and equality vis-à-vis the U.S. Presbyterians (PCUSA) and paternalist models of ecclesial relations has affected recent political strategies pursued by the IPC. Despite the paternalism of the early missionary model, changing conceptions of social transformation during the 60s contributed to a shift in relations. Over time the IPC and PCUSA negotiated relationships in which groups both acknowledge a problematic history and insist upon an ethnic of partnership and respect. Today, PCUSA groups, in concert with the IPC, collaborate on a range of transnational political strategies aimed at strengthening the IPC’s leverage in local struggles for justice and peace. A review of this case suggests that long-established Christian networks may have an advantage over other civil society groups such as NGOs in facilitating strategies of transnational alliance. Although civil society organizations often have better access to important resources needed for international advocacy initiatives, Christian networks, such as the one established between the IPC and U.S. Presbyterian communities, rely on a history of negotiating power-disparity in order to elaborate relationships based on listening and partnership. Such findings prove important not only to how we conceptualize transnational alliance but also to the ways that we think about the history and future of Christian networks.

Understanding social media in everyday life: Ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspectives

Over the last decade, social media has become a hot topic for researchers of collaborative technologies (e.g., CSCW). The pervasive use of social media in our everyday lives provides a ready source of naturalistic data for researchers to empirically examine the complexities of the social world. In this talk I outline a different perspective informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA) - an orientation that has been influential within CSCW, yet has only rarely been applied to social media use. EMCA approaches can complement existing perspectives through articulating how social media is embedded in everyday life, and how its social organisation is achieved by users of social media. Outlining a possible programme of research, I draw on a corpus of screen and ambient audio recordings of mobile device use to show how EMCA research can be generative for understanding social media through concepts such as adjacency pairs, sequential context, turn allocation / speaker selection, and repair. In doing so, I also raise questions about existing studies of social media use and the way they characterise interactional phenomena.

Desafíos de la movilización social para generar transformaciones en las instituciones: la movilización fallida en Egipto periodo 2010-2013

Este estudio de caso busca evaluar los alcances y limitaciones que tiene la movilización social para lograr transformaciones en las instituciones a partir del estudio de la movilización social en Egipto durante el período 2010-2013. Se analiza y se explica en qué sentido las instituciones de movimiento lento, como las estructuras de poder y estructuras mentales, han frustrado lo acontecido en Egipto conocido como la primavera árabe. Siguiendo la perspectiva de las instituciones de Gérard Roland y Alejandro Portes, se avanza hacia el resultado de la investigación de que las instituciones de movimiento lento tienen en cuenta aspectos estructurales de una sociedad tales como el poder y la cultura. Por ello, no pueden ser cambiadas con facilidad ya que cuentan con bases sólidas que han sido construidas mediante procesos históricos fundamentados en ideologías y valores.

Retos en la implementación de las normas internacionales al interior de los estados. estudio de caso: la región del Mekong y el protocolo de Palermo contra la trata de personas. (2007-2014)

El presente estudio de caso tiene como principal objetivo el de analizar la manera como las características sociopolíticas de los Estados del Mekong, específicamente en el caso de Camboya y Myanmar, dificultan la implementación de las normas enunciadas en el Protocolo de las Naciones Unidas para Prevenir, Reprimir y Sancionar la Trata de Personas, Especialmente Mujeres y Niños, también conocido como el Protocolo de Palermo. En este sentido, se parte de las características principales del Protocolo y de la manera como el tráfico de personas se presenta en el Mekong para posteriormente analizar la forma como la corrupción, la impunidad y la desigualdad de género representan retos sociopolíticos que obstruyen la implementación de los mandatos internacionales enmarcados en este instrumento