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In the most notorious, mixed Roma and non-Roma Romanian neighbourhood of Bucharest, structurally accumulated problems of governance turn into practical challenges that need to be tackled with the means at each person's disposal. Under conditions of capitalist incorporation and prolonged crises on the post-socialist periphery, the main protagonists of this account—male members of an extended network of Spoitori Roma with diverse livelihoods—strive for relative independence not only from market forces but also from actors who may expose them to abuse. In this article, I reflect on personalized value struggles associated with marketization. Instead of accepting sectorial divisions between formality and informality, I show how marketization elucidates moral evaluations of being and doing good among men who hope to be or become "their own bosses" in precarious urban conditions. Distinguishing folk and analytic concepts, my analysis engages with the moral contestation of the "good" and the ambiguity of value-based human endeavours among different layers of contemporary economic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Leviathan: Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft (Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG) is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Our symposium was not a stage for success narratives but for contradictions and illusions, obstacles and fears associated with sustainable action. We addressed them in a multi-perspective, discursive and interactive way. Everyone could feel that inter- and transdisciplinary experiences are borderline experiences, in finding roles and ways of working, communication and language, and in implementing ideas and insights. This is associated with uncertainty, ambiguity and disagreement, which require a holistic and equally sensitive approach to transitions and differentiation processes. With our symposium, we ventured into these border crossings. Everyone was a visible seeker, there were handshakes across disciplinary boundaries and shared stuttering. Making the blind spots visible also revealed that sustainability is not an abstract objective or method so much as a process for personal and existential maturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen (ZIB) is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The recent succession of economic, financial, health and military crises in the first two decades of the new Millennium has reminded us that the world is mostly unpredictable and that political institutions are crucial actors in shaping how our societies cope with those challenges. Nevertheless, policy makers face uncertainty more often than risk when choosing and designing policies and countermeasures. Indeed, organizational literature has pointed out long ago that uncertainty is one of the most relevant problems for organizations and that it can affect organizational decision-making in a variety of ways. This article argues for the existence of different kinds of uncertainty and for the need to analytically differentiate among them because of their different impact on organizational wrongdoing. To this end, the article proposes a typology of four types of uncertainty: routine, information uncertainty, ambiguity, and indeterminacy. The typology is based on two analytical dimensions: the kind of data available to the decision-makers at the time of the decision (data of high or low equivocality) and the frame used to interpret those data (a frame that can be shared or not among decision-makers). By relying on transcripts of the meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve (FED), the article analyses three monetary policy decisions during the Bernanke's chairmanship (2006-2014). The analysis shows that different types of uncertainty favor the emergence of peculiar decision-making dynamics, especially regarding the type of interactions among decision makers (debate vs. dispute) and the role of power in the decision process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aims at examining the urgent changes in the Israeli position from the Syrian crisis (2011-2017) which came as a result of the complexities of the positions of the conflicting parties to the conflict and the problems it left for Israel in visualizing the final status in line with its strategic interests. This made Israel deal with the crisis from the beginning in a tactical manner, and according to the updates imposed. Thus, the Israeli position on the crisis has undergone several transformations, influenced to a large extent by the development of its events, which is linked to the set of international and regional changes intertwined with it. This position ranged between the state of ambiguity, and sometimes limited intervention during the first years of the crisis, and the sufficiency of relying on the United States to protect its interests, and direct military action after the Russian intervention in 2015, to confront the threats to its national security, represented mainly by the growing of the Iranian controlling power from its northern border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people feel insecure in the face of increasing crises, a »collective helplessness« threatens the cohesion of society, disorientation leads to the search for security-promising alternatives. The state of emergency during the Corona measures and now the war in Ukraine are examined in their implications for the human need for security, possibilities of dealing with it are shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revue Académique des Études Sociales et Humaines is the property of Hassif Benbouali University of Chlef and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

I explore how considering planetary emergencE/Y in terms of natural drift can reframe "what" the environmental crisis "is" while engendering new possibilities for ethical engagement. Intelligent response thus entails participation not only at the level of technical intervention but also in/as the ability to perceive along the cusp of (in)sensibility and dance with ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the implications of governmental responses to crises for street-level implementation? The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to compare the formal role that decision-makers require of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) during a crisis. Textual analysis of 36 legislative documents and emergency regulations in Israel indicates that the additional duties assigned to police officers, teachers, and physicians reflect three interrelated changes in street-level implementation: increased policy ambiguity, higher risk exposure, and expanded discretion. Decision-makers' expectations of SLBs during a crisis highlight the inherent limit of policy-as-written to account for the operational, action-imperative essence of on-the-ground service delivery.Note: In the interests of space, street-level theory and the pandemic context underpinning the articles for this Special Issue are discussed in detail in the Introduction to the Issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the Italian territories affected by regionalization processes and subject to an institutional reform: the enforcement of Metropolitan Cities in 2014. Regionalization processes have occurred in many European countries in recent decades, also assisted by the European Cohesion Policy. In Italy, regionalized territories have place-specific characteristics and new emerging forms of bottom-up cooperation are taking place. The new government system is having to deal with a complex scenario due to the dissemination of these forms of cooperation linked to the regionalization taking place, alongside their potential coherence and/or contrast with the top-down design of the reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Betriebswirt is the property of Duncker & Humblot GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the discussions on the possible religious background of the current ecological crisis, the biblical text of Genesis 1:26-28 is the passage most often quoted by all sides of the debate. While for some it is an incentive to unlimited exploitation, and the resultant degradation of the natural environment, for others it carries a positive ecological message and a call for responsible care of the created world. Due to this ambiguity in interpretations, this article attempts to resolve whether the biblical text itself is problematic, and requires correction, or whether it is ecologically adequate, and it is the interpretations that have been thus far insufficient. Each of the three main currents of the ecological hermeneutics of the Bible (apologetic, radical, and neoorthodox) offers its own specific answer to this question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suicide is a serious public health problem; however, suicides are preventable with timely, evidence-based interventions. Social media platforms have been serving users who are experiencing real-time suicidal crises with hopes of receiving peer support. To better understand the helpfulness of peer support occurring online, this study characterizes the content of both a user's post and corresponding peer comments occurring on a social media platform and present an empirical example for comparison. It introduces an approach that uses pairwise topic models to transform large corpora of discussion into associated topics of user and peer posts. The key advantages of this approach include: (i) modeling both the generative process of each type of the corpora (i.e., user posts and peer comments) and the associations between them, and (ii) using phrases, which are more informative and less ambiguous than words, in addition to words, to represent social media posts and topics. The study evaluated the method using data from Reddit r/SuicideWatch. It examined how the topics of user and peer posts were associated and how this information influenced the peer perceived helpfulness of the peer support. Then, this study applied structural topic modeling to data collected from individuals with a history of suicidal crisis as a means to validate findings. The observations suggest that effective modeling of the association between the two lines of topics can uncover helpful peer responses to online suicidal crises, notably providing the suggestion of professional help. The proposed technology can be applied to "paired" corpora in many applications, such as technical support forums, question-answering sites, and online medical services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-conflict arrangements are always welcomed since they provide solutions to very complicated problems by solving the divisions of power inside non-cohesive societies, harmed by ethnical, national and religious, even sectarian divisions. But those creative solutions as those involved in constructive ambiguities have side effects that produce in time new crises, without a possibility to be solved in the existing framework. Lebanon case could give us lessons learnt on how such arrangements that seem panacea are fighting back and weakening a society and a state. And a crisis of the kind Lebanon faces nowadays is exposing those shortcomings. Those experiences should require a more thorough analysis of the effects in time of the administrative, diplomatic and negotiations agreements, due to solve crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In comparison with other regional host countries Lebanon's response to the Syrian refugee crisis is characterized by a remarkable degree of institutional ambiguity. Government policy has centered on the prohibition of formal refugee camps and adopted regulations with regard to registration, residence, and work which drive refugees into illegality. This is partly the result of the chaotic and overwhelming nature of any refugee crisis, which is only reinforced by the Lebanese government's limited resources and capacities and the country's dysfunctional political system. However, institutional ambiguity in the context of the Lebanese response to the Syrian refugee crisis is not merely contingent. Departing from agnotology theory, this article demonstrates that there is also a strategic component to the institutional ambiguity that now determines the life of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. On the basis of fieldwork among Syrian refugee communities, elaborate policy analysis, and an extensive literature review the article reveals the political utility of maintaining uncertainty and precariousness. These insights have profound implications for the analysis of refugee politics and the formulation of policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan's strategic planning is inspired both from the US and Russian war doctrines, and Pakistan has customized those doctrines into regional adaptations. Treading on the path of nuclear war-fighting force postures, it remains a challenge to differentiate the thin line between deterrence stability and escalation control. This challenge is unresolved, even in the second nuclear age between India and Pakistan. To overcome its conventional force disadvantage, Pakistan uses a full spectrum deterrence strategy to blur the gap between conventional and nuclear war in theory, thus making the possibility of nuclear-use a reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates the role of spokespersons and message control in complex organizations facing ambiguous crises. Specifically, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) response to the anthrax crisis in 2001 is offered as a case study. A textual analysis of CDC telebriefings and corresponding print media coverage of the anthrax crisis reveals the use of multiple spokespersons and poor message control resulted in a seemingly fragmented CDC message and apparent loss of CDC credibility. The study concludes that limiting the number of spokespersons and appropriate use of strategic ambiguity may afford organizations an opportunity to make sense of the situation, avoid confusing and contradictory messages and protect organizational credibility. Recommendations include (1) limiting the number of spokespersons, which allows for greater message control while reducing contradictory and inconsistent messages, (2) maintaining an organizational willingness to revise publicly stated positions as more accurate information becomes available, and (3) actively using strategic ambiguity as a mechanism to protect organizational credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]