Zusammenfassung: Zurzeit stellt die kolumbianische Regierung tausende kostenlose Häuser für Gewaltopfer, Naturkatastrophe Opfer und Menschen, die in extremer Armut leben, bereit. Um diese Initiative zu unterstützen, hat das Kulturministerium in Partnerschaft mit den zwei Institutionen, UARIV – Behörde für die Achtung der Opfer und Wiedergutmachung und ANSPE – Nationale Behörde für die Überwindung der extremen Armut, das soziokulturelle Großprojekt Gemeine-ist Kunst, Bibliothek und Kultur initiiert. Zwischen Juli und November 2014 beteiligte ich mich am Projekt Gemeinde-ist als Koordinatorin und Kunstvermittlerin im Wohnviertel Altos de Betania. In diesem im Norden der Stadt von Bucaramanga gelegenen Bezirk entwickelte ich gemeinsam mit vier weiteren Künstlern, einer Sozialarbeiterin und unter der aktiven Beteiligung der Gemeinschaft verschiedene kulturelle Strategien. Die Hauptziele des Projekts waren, das Zugehörigkeitsgefühl der BewohnerInnen zu ihrem Wohnviertel zu stärken und das Zusammenleben zwischen den neuen BewohnernInnen zu verbessern. Aus dieser Erfahrung konnte ich interessante neue Fragestellungen ableiten: Kann Kunst zur Friedenskonsolidierung beitragen? Welche Rolle spielen Kunst und Kultur bei der Wiedergutmachung für die Gewaltopfer? Ist es durch Kunst möglich, das Empowerment der Gemeinschaft zu fördern? Diese Masterarbeit besteht aus einer schriftlichen Arbeit, in der ich zum einen meine Beteiligung am und meine Erfahrungen mit dem Projekt Gemeinde-ist dokumentiere und reflektiere. Zum anderen analysiere ich kritisch dessen künstlerische Potenziale und setze mich mit den Grenzen solcher soziokulturellen Projekte auseinander. Resumen: Actualmente el gobierno colombiano está haciendo entrega de miles de casas gratuitas a personas que han sido víctimas del conflicto armado, en condición de pobreza extrema o damnificados por desastres naturales. Para apoyar esta iniciativa, el Ministerio de Cultura en articulación con la Unidad para la Atención y Reparación Integral a las Víctimas – UARIV- y la Agencia Nacional para la Superación de la Pobreza Extrema – ANSPE – iniciaron el proyecto sociocultural Comunidad-es Arte, Biblioteca y Cultura. Entre julio y noviembre de 2014, participé en el proyecto Comunidad-es como coordinadora y facilitadora artística en la Urbanización Altos de Betania. En este barrio, situado al norte de la ciudad de Bucaramanga, desarrollé diversas estrategias culturales junto con cuatro facilitadores socioculturales y bajo la participación activa de la comunidad. Los principales objetivos del proyecto fueron fortalecer el tejido social y mejorar la convivencia entre los nuevos residentes. A partir de esta experiencia se abrieron para mí nuevas e interesantes preguntas: ¿Puede el arte contribuir a la construcción de paz? ¿Qué rol tiene el arte y la cultura en la reparación de las víctimas de la violencia? ¿Es posible a través del arte promover el empoderamiento de la comunidad? Esta tesis de Maestría consta de un trabajo escrito, en el que en primer lugar, documento y reflexiono sobre mi participación y mi experiencia en el proyecto Comunidad-es. En segundo lugar, analizo críticamente el potencial artístico y los límites de este tipo de proyecto sociocultural.

Background: This study assessed the contributions of individual and characteristics of area of residence-level to socio-economic inequalities in violent mortality in a metropolitan Italian region. Setting: Turin, Italy. Methods: Study population was extracted from the Turin Longitudinal Study including all residents aged 20 years or more, who were censused in Turin in 2001. A mortality follow up was carried out from November 2001 to December 2008, taken into account all deaths for homicide (ICD IX 800-949), suicide (ICD IX 950-959), AIDS and overdose (ICD IX 960-979) and alcohol related causes (ICD IX 980-989). Two multilevel Poisson regression models were fitted to assess the effects of individual socioeconomic conditions (controlling for educational level, occupational status, and housing conditions) and the independent contribution of contextual-level socioeconomic conditions (Gini income concentration index and neighbourhood deprivation index) on mortality risk for the total number of violent-deaths. Results: the analysis suggest that risks to suffer any violent death for causes observed regularly increasing with lower education and is 50% higher in the lower educated individuals, compared with people with high education, to be employed showed significantly lower mortality than all the other categories. A significantly two-fold risk among those living in disadvantaged house and significantly higher among people living in small rented houses. After include in the second model area indicators-level neither the socio-economic characteristics of the neighborhood nor the relative distribution of income seem to be associated with an increase of risk of mortality from the analyzed causes. Conclusions: The socio-economic characteristics are the main determinants of individual variability in risk of mortality from violent causes and discomfort, while the characteristics of the social context does not seem to play a significant role in a large Italian metropolitan city, independently on the influence of individual socioeconomic status. The policy implications suggest that reducing socioeconomic inequalities in violence mortality may require continuing along the model developed by the environmental organization, and other cities to invest selectively on new environmental features that may moderate further the risk of violent death among people most deprived.

Modern architecture is dead. The spirit of modern architecture has evaporated. These two ideas, raised by critics such as Charles Jencks were at one point generally believed to be true. This thesis, in part, explores the ambiguity that exists around these issues and its relationship to my own work. The modern spirit refuses to disappear completely and modern architecture survives in many parts of the world. My work as an artist is not intended as a nostalgic review of these alleged losses; through images borrowed from modernity, through fictional stories, texts and cultural hybrids, my work considers the possible meanings of this hybridized, polluted, yet still desirable modernity. Using these topics, I will discuss the specific research carried out during the development of four installations exhibited over the course of the last two years at Stony Brook University galleries and other venues abroad: the project Sleep Is Just A Bad Habit has strong ties to two projects by Buckminster Fuller and his obsession with progress, time and the future; Closer Than We Think connects futuristic architecture and design from the 50s, 60s and 70s with a circular idea of time and with imagery of the future imagined in those years; the death of modern architecture and the iconic housing project Pruit Igoe by Minoru Yamasaki are the basis for the piece Superbloques in its different versions; Circa 1954 allows me to explore the relationship between text and art after Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe and the idea of authorship and the author's signature. Referecia: Jencks, Charles. What is Post – Modernism? Academy Editions, London, 1986. P. 15

If architecture has succeeded the natural impulse of evolution and demonstrated its everchanging creative power, urbanism has challenged its operationality by revealing a logic that surpasses any established concepts within the field. New urbanisms today are understood by weakening public life, changing the nature of the streets and modifying the human scale. Furthermore, the emergent post-urban life appears unmanageable due to conditions never diagnosed before: edge cities, peripheries, nodality and disarticulation seem problematic to conceptualize. What is it about the challenge of architecture capable to deploy a logic that drives urban design with a certain direction? Architecture can expand its potential design approaches through the investigation of its own rationality in order to find new sources that intersect emerging urban landscapes. The façade performs as a critical surface that articulates urban affects and provides a positive understanding of the street-grid as a persistent and flexible planning instrument along time. If the plan is not sufficient anymore, by securing its spatial hierarchies the building skin becomes significant to a contemporary discussion where architecture gains an instrument to overcome the difference. The dialogue amongst architectural design process is not reducible to a fixed set of values but to opening up its own disciplinary boundaries. It intends to rethink these borders in new terms utilizing few notions and examples that have proven as techniques of formal stability within architecture, as opposed to the diffuse and complex transformational processes of the city. Paradoxically, it is inside architecture where non-static surfaces of composition open the field to creative processes, since they are by nature given to experimentation.

The sum of small and big decisions made in all levels of companies determines its performance. Also, the quality of the decisions can be improved when there is information available to help decision makers in their task. All this has motivated the development of specific types of information systems aimed to provide the information necessary in the different levels of the company to support structured and semi-structured decision making. This research will be focused on a specific group of information systems to support decisions that make intensive use of historic data integrated from multiple sources; Data-driven Decision Support Systems (DDSS). On the other hand the features of the systems to support decisions together with tasks and techniques that are unique for these systems demanded the creation of specific development methodologies to perform the development process. In response to that demand, several proposals have been elaborated but there is no consensus in the field. Currently there is a debate around two development methodologies that are analysed on this paper. After the analysis of the proposed methodologies a case study organization with experience on the development of DDSS will be analysed. The research aims to understand and present the development process carried out in the organization to develop DDSS. In the analysis the influence of the existing methodologies and other sources, like traditional development methodologies and standardization is included. Finally a proposal to improve the development of DDSS in the case study organization is presented. The proposal is generated in the light of the existing methodologies and other particular proposals that deal with single tasks on the development process.

La aparición de Frutos de mi tierra de Tomás Carrasquilla, la primera novela en Antioquia en 1896 y la aparición de varias revistas culturales en las dos últimas décadas del siglo XIX son el punto de partida de esta investigación. ¿Qué razones explican la proliferación repentina de revistas culturales, tertulias literarias y la aparición de la novela? ¿Qué fuerzas estimulan el debate y el pensamiento crítico en una región en la cual la publicidad –entendida como el conjunto de textos públicos o Öffentlichkeit de Habermas— no pasaba de ser oficial o se restringía a la lucha partidista? ¿Qué condiciones políticas, antropológicas y estéticas, no existían hasta esta fecha y empiezan a aparecer? Para responder estas preguntas, la investigación indaga por los hitos históricos que fueron perfilando a la sociedad “paisa”: la implantación de las políticas borbonas con el oidor Mon y Velarde a finales del siglo XVIII que definieron el discurso de la región: conservador en el ámbito religioso y liberal en el económico; la expedición de la Constitución del Estado de Antioquia en 1812 y la llegada de la imprenta el mismo año, la cohesión social interna en las primeras seis décadas de vida republicana y la defensa a ultranza del Estado confesional que llevó a la región a varias guerras durante el siglo XIX. Una de ellas, la 1876 tendría una incidencia definitiva en el discurso regional: tras vivir la derrota, el discurso religioso y auto adulatorio comenzaría a enervarse. Lo anterior, sumado a Estado central que se impuso con la Constitución de 1886 desde Bogotá, generaría las condiciones para que los “paisas” comenzaran a preguntarse críticamente por su identidad cultural y a compararla, lo cual daría origen a estos nuevos espacios de sociabilidad y a la novela como uno de los productos culturales fundacionales que surgirían de este ambiente deliberativo y crítico.

The importance of early childhood education is indisputable. In the last decades developing countries have prioritized their budget towards education but despite those efforts, institutional investment in education still does not translate in higher enrollment rates in early education. Public investment can provide educational facilities, quality, and other institutional measures but only household’s investment will enable its utilization. This study pursued to identify poor household’s constraints to investment in basic education in Colombia, to understand how educational policy actions should be focalized. The OLS and fixed effects analysis for 2008 and 2003 estimates evidence the gap between urban and rural households, suggesting that the educational attainment of the parents is the most robust determinant of expenditure in early education and that data for single-mothers as the most vulnerable group is not conclusive enough. Policy targeting this population should be revised and resources prioritized towards specific programs to improve educational attainment of parents and decentralization measures. This kind of research provides empirical evidence for Colombia and would be useful for policy makers who seek a general understanding of educational regulatory policy and its implications to national development.

As a response to the negative impacts of tourism a new sustainable tourism has arisen, specifically eco-cultural tourism. This new tourism preserves and strengthens the cultural components of local communities together with the natural environment surrounding their settlements. Utilize both as touristic attractions generating job opportunities and environmental conscience among locals and tourists. Implementing Eco-cultural tourism through community participation allows creating win-win situations among the stakeholders involved, especially the less advantaged ones. This study focus on a case study of the communities La Boquilla, Marlinda and Villa Gloria settled in the northern area of Cartagena-Colombia. Their settlements are surrounded by a very biodiversity-rich area, considered one of the greenest spots of the metropolitan area of the city, the Juan Polo Marsh. The aim of this study is to examine the stakeholder’s perceptions in regard to utilize the community participation approach for developing eco-cultural tourism as a holistic strategy for taking advantage of the economic, social and environmental assets enclosed in the study area’s natural system. It was found that there are very positive conditions for developing an eco-cultural project in the study area and tremendous assets that would enhance very interesting project results. Theoretically the initiative is supported by the stakeholders interviewed and the legislation. However, several obstacles must be overtaken in order to even start the negotiations for the preliminary planning. To proceed with more complex project phases it is highly needed that the governmental sector guarantees the recognition of basic human rights to the local communities. 

Regarding the Amazon environment as a complex world defined by the interaction of natural and human elements, the aim of this thesis is to present the intellectual framework that characterized the ethnobotanical collecting of Richard Evans Schultest for the Harvard Botanical Museum. The thesis contextualizes the case study as part of the scientific drive of natural history museums from the nineteenth-century onwards, and focuses in the mid twentieth-century in regard to the specific collection and fieldwork. The issue of appropriation refers to the assumed role of museums, as Western institutions, of collecting, describing, and classifying the natural plant kingdom. Appropriation also refers to the assimilation, through scientific endeavors, of plants and knowledge that are significant to other cultures’ views of their natural and social environment. The issue of representation deals with showcasing natural and ethnographic collections in museums as non-contested, self-explanatory identities of other peoples’ culture through the mediation of a neutral observer’s standpoint and different museum practices. The thesis touches upon the role of study collections in a university museum setting to further knowledge for science. In particular, the Economic Botany Collection was intended to further the understanding of psychoactive plants used by traditional cultures for medicinal purposes. The outcome was quite complex, and the influence of this surveying effort still stands as one of the most compelling studies any museum has engaged with in the twentieth-century.

China is a successful destination for companies that are looking to receive a good return on their investment and make part of the most outstanding economy in the world. The adverse condition promoted by the state, impact directly the performance of multinational companies, one of these consequences is the Trapped Cash caused by the regulated environment in which the corporation is developing the business. The specific problem of the trapped cash will be analyzed in three different levels; the first one is China in order to familiarize corporations with the environment, generating greater understanding of the basic concepts and concerns that the organization would face. Second, the current theoretical solutions to the problem that will offer and a handful of solutions; third and finally, the case of Alcatel Lucent, a multinational company that has a long background in the Chinese environment, and is struggling because of the trapped cash in China, however, is implementing a solution to solve the liquidity problems of the organization. Concluding the study is possible to highlight the various approaches to increase the liquidity of the company by improving the management practices for the trapped cash situations. Nonetheless, while the roots of the trapped cash remain, a significant amount of cash will be freed.