John Maynard Keynes Between Old and New Institutionalism

The article considers the possible compatibility (in epistemological and ontological terms) of the conceptions of convention and institutions in the thought of John Maynard Keynes, Thorstein Veblen and Douglass North. We argue, first, that while Veblen suggests an approach to institutions based on instincts, North sustains an approach to institutions based on rational choice, which implies distinct conceptions about institutions and the social world. We then present Keynes's ontological commitments and the epistemological implications of his ontology. We conclude that there is a background ontological compatibility between Keynes and the late North in that both accept that the socioeconomic world is fundamentally uncertain and non-ergodic; also that Keynes is epistemologically closer to North than Veblen in studying the economy as a market system embedded in social institutions; and finally that Keynes's treatment of individual action is closer to Veblen’s than North’s, in that both Keynes and Veblen see human action as based on instincts and not only on rationality.

NEETs and “Structured Social Interventions” in Rural Areas: The Case of Thessaly in Greece

This article aims at approaching the phenomenon of Young people Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEETs) using the empirical data from an action against unemployment in the region of Thessaly in Greece. The main purpose of the study was to examine the attitudes and perceptions of NEETs on important issues related to employment, training, entrepreneurship, as well as their main decisions and perspectives regarding their future. This approach tries to shape a multidimensional proposal which is linked to the core peculiarities of the region of Thessaly by highlighting the transition from “specialized individual action plans” to “structured social interventions”. In conclusion, it attempts to promote a structured and applicable policy framework, shedding light on the dimensions of a crucial social issue such as NEETs promoting the drastic role of structured interventions on local and regional level.

Guns, violence, politics: the gyre widens

Inter-related sustained upward trends in firearm purchasing, violence, and political extremism are converging to put the USA at risk for disaster and threaten our future as a democracy. This narrative review provides a critical assessment and call to action. It explores each trend separately, considers the effects of their likely and imminent convergence, and suggests possibilities for collective and individual action to prevent or at least reduce those effects.

Shared action: An existential phenomenological account

Drawing on recent phenomenological discussions of collective intentionality and existential phenomenological accounts of agency, this article proposes a novel interpretation of shared action. First, I argue that we should understand action on the basis of how an environment pre-reflectively solicits agents to behave based on (a) the affordances or goals inflected by their abilities and dispositions and (b) their self-referential commitment to a project that is furthered by these affordances. Second, I show that this definition of action is sufficiently flexible to account for not only individual action (in which both (a) and (b) refer only to an individual) but also several distinct subtypes of shared action. My thesis is that behaviour counts as shared action if and only if it is caused by a solicitation in which either (a) the goals, or (b) the commitments, or both (a) goals and (b) commitments are joint, i.e., depend on several individuals. We thereby get three distinct subtypes of shared actions: (i) jointly coordinated individually committed action, (ii) individually coordinated jointly committed action, and (iii) jointly coordinated jointly committed action.

Impact of Non- Governmental Organisation in The Socio-Economic Development of Rural Lives; A Case Study of Vosard

Non-Governmental Organizations plays an important role in the development sector through participatory people cooperation. NGOs are widely recognized for filling the gaps created by governments' failure to satisfy the needs of the poorest residents in developing countries. The number of activities undertaken by NGOs has widened in the near future. It may range from awareness creation to much broad range of activities which includes humanitarian issues, developmental aid and sustainable development. Many organizations also participate in the actual administration of conservation areas, assisting in the promotion of community or individual action, as well as campaigning for more government and corporate sector accountability. Present Article focuses on effectiveness of nongovernmental organizations in rural growth through a case study directed on VOSARD (Voluntary Organization for Social Action and Rural Development), a NGO situated in Idukki district, Kerala. Major rural development programmes undertaken by the NGOs in their areas included community development programmes, agricultural programmes, human resource management and development activities, micro financing, industrial and trade programmes.

Rol del tutor en el desarrollo de habilidades cognitivas en alumnos con discapacidad intelectual

La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo diagnosticar las habilidades cognitivas en los alumnos del centro de educación básica especial Unámonos, desde el año 2013 hasta el año 2016. Con tal objetivo se realizó una medición de las habilidades cognitivas de los alumnos del centro el año 2013 (76 estudiantes ) para posteriormente realizar una nueva medición de dichas habilidades el año 2016, luego de la aplicación de 3 años consecutivos del plan de acción individual en cada uno de los alumnos a fin de evaluar los resultados obtenidos, adicionalmente durante los años 2014,2015 se realizó una evaluación (de 23 estudiantes ),para evaluar la eficacia de la estrategia plan de acción individual. Cabe resaltar que para la realización de la presente investigación y como parte del proceso de evaluación de las habilidades cognitivas se procedió a la creación de instrumentos especialmente diseñados y acordes a las necesidades de niños con habilidades diferentes, mismos que fueron creados por la autora, dichos instrumentos incluyen la evaluación del desarrollo integral en alumnos con habilidades diferentes en sus diferentes versiones A, B, C Y D para alumnos cuyas edades oscila entre los 3 y 28 años. La información obtenida en la presente investigación fue recogida a través de evaluaciones individuales con cada uno de los alumnos del centro, tiempo en el cual se tomaron todas las previsiones las cuales incluyen fotografías y videos de los alumnos a fin de alcanzar la mayor validez y confiabilidad del estudio. Cabe resaltar que al finalizar la investigación se observó un incremento significativo en las habilidades cognitivas de cada uno de los alumnos especialmente en áreas tales como: secuencia de palabras, lenguaje comprensivo y nociones espaciales, áreas donde se observaron mejoras en los estudiantes de hasta un 80 % alcanzándose los objetivos generales y específicos propuestos para este trabajo. La hipótesis de la investigación, “todos los alumnos, independientemente del grado de discapacidad que presenten, tienen la posibilidad de mejorar y desarrollar sus habilidades a partir de mediciones adecuadas y de estrategias pedagógicas apropiadas”, fue totalmente comprobada. The objective of this research was to diagnose the cognitive skills of the students of the Unámonos basic special education center, from 2013 to 2016. With such objective, a measurement of the cognitive skills of the students of the center was carried out in 2013 (76 students) to subsequently perform a new measurement of such skills in 2016, after the application of 3 consecutive years of the individual action plan in each of the students in order to evaluate the results obtained, additionally during the years 2014,2015 an evaluation was carried out (of 23 students), to evaluate the effectiveness of the individual action plan strategy. It should be noted that in order to carry out this research and as part of the evaluation process of cognitive skills, we proceeded to the creation of instruments specially designed and according to the needs of children with different abilities, which were created by the author, these instruments include the evaluation of the integral development in students with different abilities in their different versions A, B, C and D for students whose ages range between 3 and 28 years. The information obtained in the present research was collected through individual evaluations with each of the students of the center, during which time all the previsions were taken, including photographs and videos of the students in order to achieve the greatest validity and reliability of the study. It should be noted that at the end of the research a significant increase was observed in the cognitive skills of each of the students, especially in areas such as: word sequence, comprehension language and spatial notions, areas where improvements were observed in the students of up to 80%, reaching the general and specific objectives proposed for this work. The hypothesis of the research, "all students, regardless of the degree of disability they present, have the possibility of improving and developing their skills based on adequate measurements and appropriate pedagogical strategies", was fully proven.

Dynamics of Contention in the Gig Economy: Rage Against the Platform, Customer, or State?

Protest in the gig economy has taken many forms and targets (platforms, customers, and state officials). However, researchers are yet to adequately account for this diversity. We use a European survey of Upwork and PeoplePerHour platform workers in the remote gig economy to investigate worker orientation towards different forms of protest. Results reveal that worker anger, dependence, and digital communication shape contention in the remote gig economy. Support for collective organisation is associated not only with anger at platforms but also workers’ dependence on the platform and communication with other workers. Whereas individual action against clients is associated only with anger and communication but not communication and support for state regulation is associated only with anger but not dependence or communication. We conclude that despite the novelty of these emergent social relations, the relational approach entailed by Mobilisation Theory can aid explanation of contention in the gig economy by shedding light on the dynamic process by which solidarity and dependence alter the perceived costs and benefits of particular remedies to injustice

Generating individual intrinsic reward for cooperative multiagent reinforcement learning

Multiagent reinforcement learning holds considerable promise to deal with cooperative multiagent tasks. Unfortunately, the only global reward shared by all agents in the cooperative tasks may lead to the lazy agent problem. To cope with such a problem, we propose a generating individual intrinsic reward algorithm, which introduces an intrinsic reward encoder to generate an individual intrinsic reward for each agent and utilizes the hypernetworks as the decoder to help to estimate the individual action values of the decomposition methods based on the generated individual intrinsic reward. Experimental results in the StarCraft II micromanagement benchmark prove that the proposed algorithm can increase learning efficiency and improve policy performance.