Suchergebnisse

For many, small firms are everyday realities of the economy and visible in every high-street and industrial estate. Their existence and importance is unquestionable. Such beliefs are understandable, but the authors of this new book would suggest they are misguided. The Political Economy of the Small Firm challenges the assumptions regarding small firms that pervade society and political representation. Small firms are not organised into a homogenous sector that has a clear constituency or political influence. In fact, the small firm is shown to be an inconstant political construct that is discursively ethereal and vulnerable to political exploitation. Fusing theories from political science, management and linguistics, Dannreuther and Perren assert that the idea of the small firm is an important discursive resource used by political actors to legitimise their actions, influence their citizens and help sustain regimes of accumulation. On top of this, the authors also empirically test their claims against 200 years of UK parliamentary debate, from the Industrial Revolution to the Blair government. The political construction of the small firm is shown not only to provide rhetorical mechanisms to maintain periods of capitalist accumulation, but also to increase the relative autonomy of the state and to centralise power to elite politicians. For a period of 150 years up to the 1970s, the small firm was an unexplored presence, below the political radar and resonant with poor working standards and extreme forms of competition. During the so-called Fordist period from the 1930s, the small firm was seen as the dirty, out-dated, contrast to the clean, modern future represented by mass production and corporations. The perceived failure of Fordism led to the invention of the small firm and its presentation as an ideal political construct. By fabricating assertions of what small firms are and what they want, frequently out of conjecture, the authors of this book show how political elites have been able to advocate radical reformist agendas since the 1970s in the name of a phantom constituency.--

This article turns to the First World War's unsettling effects on the lives of women in Britain to argue that our access to the complex terrain of sexuality has been circumscribed by the resilience in lesbian, gay, and queer history of the genealogical project that emerged from 1970s' liberation politics and, later, the Foucauldian analysis of knowledge and power. As an organizing metaphor genealogy has been useful in broadening the scope of the sexual past, tracking ancestries of both similitude and rupture, yet there is much that it occludes. Despite queer theory's interrogation of identity, genealogy continues to categorize human experience as normative or deviant. To rethink available pathways in historicizing sexuality in relation to gender, race, nation, and class, this project discovers an ideal site in the communities and desires of Anglo-American women who exploited the social disruptions of World War I. This cultural moment highlights some of the problems that currently vex identity history's dominant mode of inquiry and allows the envisioning of how sexuality might be studied differently.

This article interprets demokratia and arete as dynamically related terms of political thought in ancient Greek culture, from Homeric times to the end of the classical era. It does so selectively, identifying three stages in which this relationship is developed: (1) from the Homeric to archaic eras; (2) fifth-century Athenian democracy, in which demokratia and arete are posed as complementary terms; and (3) the fourth century era in which philosophers used virtue to critique democracy. Relying mostly on evidence from writers who have become benchmarks in the history of Western political thought, the argument emphasizes the inherently political dimension of arete during this period of ancient Greek culture. Noting different ways in which arete is related to political power in general and democracy in particular, it also illustrates the manner in which arete is neither philosophically pristine nor merely an instrument of practical power. The effect of the research contradicts traditional and recent readings of democracy and virtue as inherently antagonistic. The aim of the article is to identify ancient Greek contributions to understanding the potential, contingencies and dangers of the relationship between democracy (as a form of power) and virtue (as a form of ethics) — one which may benefit both democracy and virtue.

'Der Beitrag analysiert Gesetze und Regelungen über die Finanzierung von politischen Parteien und Wahlkampagnen in 17 Ländern: Albanien, Weißrussland, Bosnien-Herzegowina, Bulgarien, Kroatien, Tschechien, Estland, Ungarn, Lettland, Litauen, Mazedonien, Moldawien, Polen, Rumänien, Russland, Slowakei und Ukraine. Er bietet einen Überblick über die Kosten der Politik in einigen dieser Länder und stellt Hypothesen auf zu Mustern der Politikfinanzierung in Mittelosteuropa. Ein zentrales Ergebnis ist die Vielfalt der Politikfinanzierung in den untersuchten Ländern, was zumindest teilweise auf die unterschiedlichen historischen, politischen, sozialen und ökonomischen Merkmale der Länder in der Region zurückzuführen ist. Nach der Häufigkeit der angewandten Regelungen und Förderungen in den behandelten Ländern ergibt sich folgende Reihung: freie Sendungen in Radio und/oder TV: 100%; direkte staatliche Unterstützung von Parteien und/oder KandidatInnen: 76%; Ausgabenbeschränkungen (für Parteien und/oder KandidatInnen): 59%; Beschränkungen der Spenden an Parteien und/oder KandidatInnen: 47%. Die geringe Bedeutung von Mitgliedsbeiträgen scheint ein hervorstechendes Merkmal zu sein. In einigen der untersuchten Länder sind reiche 'Oligarchen' als politische Finanziers aufgetreten, und einige post-kommunistische Parteien sind nach wie vor stark von Mieteinnahmen aus Gebäuden abhängig, die sie von den früheren kommunistischen Regimes geerbt haben.' (Autorenreferat)

This paper is the first of a series of papers exploring the political and institutional contexts of resource mobilization and social spending for social development in Uganda. We provide the historical context of, and trends in, resource mobilization (domestic and external revenue) and social spending in post-independence Uganda. After years of civil war, mismanagement and general decline, Uganda turned a page in 1986 when NRM (National Resistance Movement) came to power. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Uganda was a prototypical donor-dependent country with aid constituting more than half of government revenue. During this period, the government, in partnership with donors, focused spending on targeted pro-poor development programmes, including primary education and basic health care. While priority of these social sectors has led to some improvements in social development outcomes, the quality of education and health care is still disappointing and social protection programmes remain neglected. Moreover, domestic resource mobilization has not improved considerably which points to issues of weak institutional capacity as well as the contested nature of taxation. Trends in recent years show an increasingly strained relationship between the government and its traditional donors, piecemeal and ad hoc tax reforms, promise of increasing revenue from oil, and a move in policy priorities away from human capital development to spending on infrastructure and expansion of productive sectors.

"In the last two decades, the concept of 'Sustainable Development' has made a steep career as a political and ethical guideline for dealing with the planet's ecological and social crisis. The concept, globally inaugurated in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (socalled Brundtland Commission) is, however, not a brain-child of the modern environmental movement. Its blueprint can be found in the professional terminology of forestry. 'Sustained yield' had been the major doctrine of international forestry for almost two centuries. This formula is a translation of the German term 'nachhaltiger Ertrag'. The roots of this concept can be traced back to the era of early 'European Enlightenment', when German Kameralists, inspired by the English author John Evelyn and the French statesman Jean Baptist Colbert, began to plan their dynasties' woodlands 'nachhaltig' - in order to hand them along undiminished to future generations. The word itself was then coined in 1713 by Hanns Carl von Carlowitz, head of the Royal Mining Office in the Kingdom of Saxony, in order to meet the challenge of a predicted shortage of timber, the key resource of the time. This paper on the historical evolution of the concept of sustainability is thought to be a contribution to the 20th anniversary of the report of the Brundtland Commission." (author's abstract)

Strengthening the idea of national ideology in the period of radical social changes in the country is inextricably linked with the process of national identity of the Uzbek people, national identity, the growth of political culture - a progressive phenomenon, an important achievement of national independence. At present, the socio-economic essence of the Uzbek people's development, its spiritual activity has become a key factor in the search for ways of national awakening, development and improvement of national identity, which will become a powerful force only if they know and understand the history, culture and spirituality.

This book is a major contribution to the study of political economy. With chapters ranging from the origins of political economy to its most exciting research fields, this handbook provides a reassessment of political economy as it stands today, whilst boldly gesturing to where it might head in the future. This handbook transcends the received dichotomy between political economy as an application of rational choice theory or as the study of the causes of societies' material welfare, outlining a broader field of study that encompasses those traditions. This book will be essential reading for academics, researchers, students, and anyone looking for a comprehensive reassessment of political economy.--

Kritische Psychologie wird in diesem Beitrag subjektiv betrachtet: Wie Lebensgeschichte zu wissenschaftlichem Interesse und sozialem Handeln verleitet und in kritischer Psychologie mündet, die sich durch ein radikales Verständnis psychischen Geschehens auszeichnet, also in der Lage ist, seinen Zusammenhang mit gesellschaftlichen Lebensbedingungen - dem sie bis an die Wurzeln seines Entstehens folgt - freizulegen. Wie diese neue, gesellschaftskritische Psychologie entstanden, was aus ihr geworden ist und was aus ihr vielleicht noch werden könnte, wird beispielhaft angedeutet.

vi, 160 p. ; 28 cm. ; University of Michigan. Center for Japanese Studies. ; The intent of the Charter Oath / Robert M. Spaulding, Jr. -- Japanese political reaction to constitutional revision 1945-46 / Peter G. Cornwall -- United States reparations policy toward Japan September 1945 to May 1949 / Bruce M. Brenn -- The origins and policies of the Japan Teachers' Union 1945-56 / Richard J. Smethurst.

Este estudio evalúa la utilidad y pertinencia de la sociología política platónica, sistematizando los conceptos teóricos subyacentes sobre el cambio político presentes en el libro octavo de la República. Analizamos, primeramente, al estado como idea desde el cual se clasifican las demás formas políticas. Continuamos con la visión del hombre como un ser anímicamente dividido y sujeto a diferentes fuerzas. Finalmente, estudiamos los elementos teóricos transformadores de los regímenes vistos estos desde su forma eidética. Destacamos: la visión cíclico-vital, el cambio interno y la contradicción. En la conclusión destacamos el valor del modelo teórico racional y de ver los regímenes como procesos. ; This essay assesses the usefulness and pertinence of Plato's political sociology, systematizing the subjacent theoretical concepts about political change in the book eight of the Republic. Firstly, we analyze the State as an idea able to measure the other political forms. We continue with his portrait of man as a being with a divided soul and driven by different forces. Finally, from an eidetic standpoint, we study the theoretical elements that bring about the political change. We underscore: the idea of the cycle, the internal transformation and the contradiction. In the conclusions we reflect on the value of the theoretical model and in the study of the political regimens as processes. ; 119-150 ; ortizmar@telcel.net.vet ; anual

This paper analyzes remittances sent by Ukrainian emigrants to their country of origin. It explores the dependence on remittances of a household's spending on human capital, savings and donations, against the backdrop of the political situation in Ukraine in 2004. The paper also explores the effect of the political instability in Ukraine on how the households receiving remittances used them. The results of a Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS) are used to explore households' decision to spend on human capital development, save, or donate money, depending on their political views and future expectations. The main hypothesis tested\nis whether the individuals who supported and/or were involved with the Revolution ("pro-orange"), and who were optimistic about the future of Ukraine after the Orange Revolution, saved/donated more money than those who did not support the Revolution ("pro-blue-white"). In addition, the level of influence of remittances received from relatives or friends outside Ukraine on decisions to save and donate money is analyzed. The results show that the political views of respondents do not have a significant effect on decisions to save and/or donate money. However respondents' political orientations do have a significant effect on the probability of receiving remittances - those who voted for "pro-orange" have a lower probability of receiving remittances from outside the household.

This doctoral thesis contains two parts: a critical exegesis in English and a scholarly translation in Spanish. With the latter comprising a book-length collection of essays from Contrary Notions. The Michael Parenti Reader (2007), this study seeks to contextualize Parenti's work within the global translation market; additionally, it examines the researcher's translation of Russell Crandall's Gunboat Democracy: U.S. Interventions in the Dominican Republic, Grenada and Panama (2006), published in Spanish as Democracia a la fuerza. Intervenciones estadounidenses en la República Dominicana, Granada y Panamá (2011). Involving process- and product-oriented issues in two English-to-Spanish book translations in the social sciences, this study focuses on the rendering of metaphor and other stylistic devices, while delving into the role of the translator in replacing, via a text-holistic strategy of compensation, sentence-level loss with book-length gains. Additionally, in the context of the researcher's own second-language (L2) translations, it seeks to challenge underlying assumptions regarding first-language (L1) translation and the privileged status it holds with regard to directionality and argues that, when it comes to identifying L1 and L2 proficiency in the context of translation, the intricacies involved require nuanced approaches, leaving little or no room for facile prescriptions of a binary nature. Further, this study examines the translator's agency and collaborative-intervenient role as writer and researcher in producing, with authorial consent, bibliographically-expanded texts to meet target-culture expectations regarding scholarly work with local implications. Drawing from this researcher's extensive communications with publishers in relation to the Crandall source and target texts, this study also examines, within the framework of agency, the translator's role as de-facto literary agent from project conception and proposal submissions to peritextual production and rights-related negotiations. In short, this thesis represents a practice-led case study on translating scholarly non-fiction—challenges posed, strategies developed and agency wielded in creating Spanish versions of two books in the social sciences.

Energy storage is a key challenge to a sustainable energy supply. To design new storage systems accurateand representative thermal property measurements are essential. The T-history method is quick anduncomplicated, however numerous adaptations have been proposed over the years. In this study thesemethods have been classified and critically assessed based on their mathematical formulation and exper-imental configuration. They can be broadly categorized according to one of three assumptions regardingthe heat transfer coefficient for natural convection: it is constant either as a function of time or tem-perature, or it is negligible. This work proves in addition that the heat transfer coefficient for naturalconvection, varies both as a function of time and temperature. This is demonstrated both experimentallyand through rigorous simulation of the proposed configurations. Thus T-history methods which show themost promise for precise and unambiguous measurements eliminate convection by making conductionthe dominant thermal resistance in the system. These techniques can be tailored to different materialsand do not require a simultaneous reference due to the use of a rigorous fundamental model comparedto the lumped parameter approximation. The addition of heat flux sensors to quantify actual heat lossesis recommended for absolute measurement certainty. ; The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) and under Grant agreement N°PIRSES-GA-2013-610692 (INNOSTORAGE), and from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 657466 (INPATH-TES). The work is partially funded by the Spanish government (ENE2015-64117-C5-1-R (MINECO/FEDER)). Dr. Luisa F. Cabeza would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to the research group GREA (2014 SGR 123).

A dominant trend in cyberpunk scholarship draws from Fredric Jameson's diagnosis of postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism, using Jameson's spatial pastiche, schizophrenic temporality, and waning of affect, along with Jameson's characterization of Baudrillard's simulacrum to interpret postmodern cultural artifacts. For many cultural critics, the city of cyberpunk is thoroughly postmodern because parallels can be drawn between the cyberpunk city and the postmodern condition. However, very little work has considered the ways in which cyberpunk can defamiliarize the necro-spatial and necro-temporal logic of neoliberalism. This project moves away from more traditional disciplinary aesthetic methods of analyzing power and urban systems, such as interpretation and representation. And, it problematizes the biopolitical present in three different ways. First, by weaving in and out of an analysis of the narratives, discourses, and spatio-temporalities of cyberpunk and neoliberalism, I seek to produce epistemological interferences within these genres/disciplines, and thus, to disrupt the conceptual and lived biopolitical status-quo of late-capitalism. The goal is to open the door for discomfort with and a critical awareness of the necrotic conditions of competition by highlighting the fictive nature of neoliberalism. Second, this study problematizes accelerationism as a viable alternative to leftist politics and suggests in the end that accelerationism is a form of neoliberal resilience. It does this through an analysis of the biohacker that reframes this subject in terms of accelerationism and the logic of intensity. I argue that the biohacker is the accelerationist subject Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek advocate for in their "Accelerationist Manifesto," suggesting that this accelerationist subject is, in the end, a neoliberal subject that fits easily within the conditions of competition. This study argues that the biohacker in its numerous forms reflects an underlying pure neoliberalism at work within accelerationism and its neoliberal governmentalities. I suggest that far from being an alternative to leftist politics, accelerationism may further the goals of neoliberalism in its desire to accelerate to a purified market space. And, finally, this study works towards offering a biopolitics that theorizes death in terms of ordinariness and suggests that biopolitics is still a useful analytic within neoliberalism. In other words, Foucault's biopolitics can do more than theorize a genealogy of biological racism and genocide. Rather than advocate for moving beyond biopolitics, this study argues instead that neoliberal biopolitics can still be understood in terms of Foucault's analytic, and that perhaps, we need to disentangle Foucault's work from Achille Mbembe's "Necropolitics." ; Doctor of Philosophy ; A dominant trend in cyberpunk scholarship draws from Fredric Jamesons diagnosis of postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism, using Jamesons spatial pastiche, schizophrenic temporality, and waning of affect, along with Jamesons characterization of Baudrillards simulacrum to interpret postmodern cultural artifacts. For many cultural critics, the city of cyberpunk is thoroughly postmodern because parallels can be drawn between the cyberpunk city and the postmodern condition. However, very little work has considered the ways in which cyberpunk can defamiliarize the necro-spatial and necro-temporal logic of neoliberalism. This project moves away from more traditional disciplinary aesthetic methods of analyzing power and urban systems, such as interpretation and representation. It problematizes the biopolitical present in three different ways. First, by weaving in and out of an analysis of the narratives, discourses, and spatio-temporalities of cyberpunk and neoliberalism, I seek to produce epistemological interferences within these genres/disciplines, and thus, to disrupt the conceptual and lived biopolitical status-quo of late-capitalism. Second, this study problematizes accelerationism as a viable alternative to leftist politics and suggests in the end that accelerationism is a form of neoliberal resilience. And, finally, this study works towards offering a biopolitics that theorizes death in terms of ordinariness and suggests that biopolitics is still a useful analytic within neoliberalism. Methodologically, the project utilizes an interdisciplinary approach, pulling from political theory, genre studies, discourse analysis, and digital ethnographic research. Professionals and scholars interested in contesting neoliberalism will benefit from this study as it offers ways to problematize neoliberalisms reality construction.