RISULTATI RICERCA

La convivenza tra persone di culture diverse è una questione di notevole rilevanza sociale, come testimoniano le ostilità tra israeliani e palestinesi, le rivalità tra i popoli della ex Iugoslavia, ma anche le violenze nelle banlieu parigine o gli attentati terroristici a Londra ad opera di immigrati di seconda generazione. Il volume indica strategie utili al fine di costruire rapporti armoniosi tra i gruppi nelle moderne società. Rupert Brown insegna Psicologia Sociale in importanti università inglesi. Dora Capozza insegna Psicologia dei gruppi e Conflitto e cooperazione tra i gruppi presso l’Università di Padova. Orazio Licciardello presiede il Corso di Laurea in Psicologia presso l’Università di Catania.

Smallholder farmers in the Western Highlands of Guatemala grow potatoes for subsistence and as a cash crop but their current productivity is 29% lower than the world average. The objective of this study is to provide policy recommendations for improving potato productivity through enhancing technical efficiency in smallholder potato farming in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. In doing so, this study examines the determinants of potato productivity and identifies the sources of technical inefficiency in smallholder potato farming. In addition, the study evaluates the economic welfare impact of potato farm operations and provides policy recommendations for increasing smallholder potato productivity through enhancing technical efficiency. Stochastic production frontier analysis showed that on average farmers are at 57% efficiency. Hence, there is a considerable room for improving efficiency in potato farming. The sources of inefficiency of the farmers were determined to be caused by higher elevation, smaller farm size, and location of the farms. Welfare gains from reaching potential efficiency is US$ 8.79 million in terms of producer surplus per year in Guatemala. Hence, this study provides valuable information for policy makers and farmers for improving technical efficiency and producer surplus. Likewise, providing better conservation practices by extension will ameliorate the low productivity associated with higher elevation and locations that are lower in technical efficiency.

Di fronte a nuove crisi bancarie si presume che gli Stati non dovrebbero più intervenire a salvare le banche dal fallimento a meno che il costo del salvataggio non finisse per gravare sulle spalle dei contribuenti. Le dissestate finanze pubbliche non potrebbero del resto più sopportare il costo dei salvataggi bancari, di cui peraltro potrebbe non esserci più bisogno se, nel frattempo, fossero trovate soluzioni giuridiche diverse da quelle attualmente in vigore per gestire le crisi bancarie riducendone l’impatto sui risparmiatori. Le sorti di questi ultimi dovrebbero tuttavia essere affidate più che altro alla buona gestione dell’attivo e del passivo delle banche nonché alle loro attitudini e alla loro politica nei riguardi dei rischi assunti o assumibili.

The transparent body: bio-power and bio-knowledge in the consumer society ABSTRACT: Proposing a sociological and comprehensive model that can understand the historical and social conditions which made possible for man to build himself as an object of reflexivity, Gomes suggests that the perspective of the body like an unitary being should be abandoned. Instead of speaking about an entity intrinsic to the body it is suggested that the body is the result of a specific body regime.This paper analyses this regime in the health-context through a theoretical approach based on Foucault’s concept of governmentality the techniques and processes through which expert knowledge constitutes normalized bodies and subjectivities and technologies of subjectivity a set of ethical techniques about itself which has in the subjectivity its own effect.

In this paper we break new ground by investigating the relationship between organizational characteristics and performance in ‘retail’ waste management in Portugal for the year 2016. We found that total costs and tariff revenues can be explained by the management model. Municipal corporations seem to present the lowest results, while private sector participation scores the highest levels. This has implications for the Portuguese regulatory agency. The ongoing regulatory framework is still not sufficient to safeguard users’ interests such as lower prices. We are focusing on performance results that are influenced by previous contractual agreements. Attached to increasing regulatory power, efforts should be placed at contract negotiation between the parties.

The study focuses on the ancient olive tree landscape in Apulia, Italy, a regional symbol of historical, cultural and economic importance. Because of the recent crisis caused by rising farm costs, farmers are replacing ancient olive trees with more remunerative crops. After verifying the economic unsustainability of both a regional law (2006) that forbids the eradication of ancient olive trees and a EU subsidy, we assess the value of the benefits furnished by the rural landscape through the contingent valuation method. The results reveal a significant value of landscape benefits, suggesting taxation strategies for an effective preservation policy.

Apulia has a considerable demand of irrigation water, however high inefficiency levels of the collective water networks force most of the regional farms to use groundwater, with a consequent worsening of its quality, as well as of soil and crops characteristics. Therefore, the use of sustainable supply methodsfor irrigation water is desirable both through improvements of the collective networks and by appropriate economic tools.However, making the correct choices in these matters requires knowledge concerning the effects of the present water supply systems on the economic performance of farms.The objective of this study is to measure and compare the technical efficiency of winegrowing farms in northern Apulia that use different supply systems for irrigation water: groundwater from private wells, irrigation water from collective networks, and irrigation water from both private wells and collective networks. The results enable to understand if and how different supply systems of irrigation water affect the management of productive factors and inputs. These findings also provide useful information for appropriate policies aimed at preserving groundwater and its externalities, as well as at improving the economic performance of Apulian farms.

This article is the result of a psychotherapy with two groups of people with Panic Disorder (both with 1 terapist, 1 co-terapist and 10 patients). It has been supposed that group perspective, in some respects, should prove more advantageous for specific PD’s features. We aimed at understanding how much Panic Attack reveals itself in relationship’s establishment and at helping patients to move in different ways, also by short steps, towards an improvement. For keeping psychotherapy accessible to most people, a therapy pattern that should be as successful for symptomatology as for personality organisation was proposed, keeping in mind stronger hypothesis about psychological and biological PD’s development. The epistemological background is systemic-relational. We tried to find a therapy that should allow for either unsettled clinic situations or for indispensable goals. An hypothesis for change and for mental transformation, rather than an inflexible therapy model, was pursued, assessing the whole factors for specific situations, acting on the ones considered more active, and then testing the outcomes that interventions in a specific area arouses in the others. The treatment with these groups pursued specific aims: To reach symptomatology’s control and reduction; To recover relational functioning; To change where possible, some outlooks on world which represent the individual personality organization; to assume to pass to a self-help group, at the end of the psychotherapy.This work argues that panic fear, through group psychotherapy process, turns out to be less painful. Moreover, the group bears a best emotive and social level of functioning, meeting the patients expectations for both effectiveness and cheapness.