After Marx, dissenting economics almost always used 'the labour theory' as a theory of value. This paper develops a modern treatment of the alternative labour theory of property that is essentially the property theoretic application of the juridical principle of responsibility: impute legal responsibility in accordance with who was in fact responsible. To understand descriptively how assets and liabilities are appropriated in normal production, a 'fundamental myth' needs to be cleared away, and then the market mechanism of appropriation can be (...) understood. On the normative side, neoclassical theory represents marginal productivity theory as showing that (a metaphorical version of) the imputation principle is satisfied ('people get what they produce') in competitive enterprises. Since that shows the moral commitment of neoclassical economics to the imputation principle, the labour theory of property is presented here as the actual non-metaphorical application of the imputation principle to property appropriation. The property-theoretic analysis at the firm level shows how the neoclassical (and much heterodox) analysis in terms of 'distributive shares' wholly misframed the basic questions. Finally, the paper shows how the imputation principle (modernised labour theory of property) is systematically violated in the present wage labour system of renting persons. The paper can be seen as taking up the recent challenge posed by Donald Katzner for a dialogue between neoclassical and heterodox microeconomics. (shrink)

The point of departure of David Ellerman's paper is that the role of labour in economics can be looked at in a fundamentally different way than has typically been the case. The paper's purpose is, therefore, oppositional. However, it cannot simply be dismissed. It is clearly articulated, well reasoned, and most importantly, thought provoking. It requires one to rethink how one conceives some basic issues in economics. As such, one does not need to be entirely convinced by the argument to (...) consider it worthy of dissemination. At the same time, if one subscribes to the ethic of structured or critical pluralism one must also consider the pressure points of the argument (see Dow, 2004; Dobusch and Kapeller, 2012). Below, I briefly reconstruct Ellerman's core claims and provide some comment on that argument. Read David Ellerman's paper "The Labour Theory of Property and Marginal Productivity Theory". (shrink)

Jamie Morgan's commentary (Morgan, 2016) on my paper 'The Labour Theory of Property and Marginal Productivity Theory' (Ellerman, 2016) and Ted Burczak's later comments (Burczak, 2016) raise a number of issues that surely will occur to other readers and that need to be addressed. I take the occasion to expand upon the arguments and to explore some related issues. In the narrative that unfolds, Frank H. Knight plays the role of the sophisticated defender of the system of renting, hiring (...) and employing human beings. He was quite clear that the social role of economics is to develop an idealised model, the competitive free enterprise model, and then to frame the normative discussion in terms of that model. Knight would agree with the whole thread of heterodox 'criticism' that the actual economy falls far short of the ideal – which is why I largely eschewed the descriptive shortcomings of ideal model as a purported model of the actual economy. Instead my paper focused on developing a critique of the key part of the idealised model, the marginal productivity theory of distribution under competitive conditions. That critique is based on the usual juridical principle of imputing legal responsibility in accordance with factual responsibility – the principle whose property-theoretic application is the modern treatment of the labour theory of property. Historically, heterodox economics faced a fork in the road in the 19th century: whether to criticise 'the system' by developing the inchoate 'labour theory' as a theory of value or a theory of property. Marx and much of left-wing economics took the labour-theory-of-value road, whereas my paper is part of a modern attempt – Thomas Hodgskin (1832) being an earlier attempt – to take the labour-theory-of-property road. As we will see, much of the debate still revolves around these two roads. Read David Ellerman's original paper "The Labour Theory of Property and Marginal Productivity Theory" › Read Jamie Morgan's commentary on David Ellerman's paper ›. (shrink)

While the history of science in Polish language has a long history, both intellectual and institutional, it became less visible internationally following the fall of the Iron Curtain. This article looks into the institutional state of history-of-science writing in Poland, and discusses several key focal points that emerged in recent years. By distinguishing between the core history of science, written at institutions devoted to this discipline, and broader academic discussions concerning science's past, I claim that, in recent decades, more important (...) topical and theoretical innovation has come from what we can term the “esoteric” circle (referring to Ludwik Fleck)—that is, scholars who do not identify themselves as historians of science. Given that those scholars from abroad who are interested in Polish history of science are in fact general historians, we get a strong impression that we are witnessing a deeper turn in the field, one with diminishing specialization and greater attention paid to situating science in a broader range of societal processes. (shrink)

The use of marginal land (ML) for lignocellulosic biofuel production is examined for system stability, resilience, and eco-social sustainability. A North American prairie grass system and its industrialization for maximum biomass production using biotechnology and agro-technical inputs is the focus of the analysis. Demographic models of ML biomass production and ethanol farmer/producers are used to examine the stability properties of the ML system. A bio-economic model that maximizes the utility of consumption having the dynamics of MLs and the farmer/producers (...) as dynamic constraints is used to examine the effects of increased conversion efficiency, input costs, risk, and levels of base resources and inputs on the competitive and societal solutions for biomass production. We posit ML abandonment after biofuel production ceases could lead to permanent land degradation below initial levels that prohibit the establishment of the original flora and fauna. (shrink)

In September 2014, students and Hong Kong citizens took to the streets demanding universal suffrage. Cell phones and video cameras in hand, amateur student filmmakers were some of the first to capture the police tear-gassing young people that brought the city to its feet. Young people were positioning themselves as storytellers and knowledge producers on the streets. How has this restructured hierarchy of knowledge production often found in university education in Hong Kong? How too has being active participants and/or passive (...) observers of the events of the Umbrella Movement translated into a pedagogy of experience in student’s daily lives, and how has this knowledge returned to the classroom? Specifically, I am interested in ways that young women who are not Cantonese first-language speakers understand their role in the movement and the kinds of knowledge they produced. Through interviews with these diverse students, and visual data from the footage they shot during the protests, we gain a rare g... (shrink)

In September 2014, students and Hong Kong citizens took to the streets demanding universal suffrage. Cell phones and video cameras in hand, amateur student filmmakers were some of the first to capture the police tear-gassing young people that brought the city to its feet. Young people were positioning themselves as storytellers and knowledge producers on the streets. How has this restructured hierarchy of knowledge production often found in university education in Hong Kong? How too has being active participants and/or passive (...) observers of the events of the Umbrella Movement translated into a pedagogy of experience in student’s daily lives, and how has this knowledge returned to the classroom? Specifically, I am interested in ways that young women who are not Cantonese first-language speakers understand their role in the movement and the kinds of knowledge they produced. Through interviews with these diverse students, and visual data from the footage they shot during the protests, we gain a rare glimpse into the multicultural world gathered beneath the umbrella of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, and how a new generation of young female filmmakers are using video to share their changing perspectives on democratic reform, education, and everyday life. (shrink)

The principle of differential marginality (Casajus in Theory and Decis 71(2):163-–174) for cooperative games is a very appealing property that requires equal productivity differentials to translate into equal payoff differentials. In this paper we apply this property to axiomatic characterizations of values. We show that differential marginality implies additivity and symmetry under certain conditions. Based on this result, we propose new characterizations of the equal division and the equal surplus division values. Finally, we characterize two classes of convex combinations of (...) values, i.e., α\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha$$\end{document}-egalitarian Shapley values and α\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha$$\end{document}-equal surplus division values, by employing differential marginality and establishing the uniqueness of these values on inessential games. (shrink)

Historically marginalized foods, which occupy the social periphery, and often function as a bulwark in times of hunger, are increasingly being rediscovered and revalued as niche commodities. From açaí to quinoa, the move from marginal to miracle is often tied to larger narratives surrounding sustainable development, resilience to climate change, and traditional foodways. This article analyses the recent move towards millet production and consumption in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Focusing upon one of the grain’s chief proponents, I (...) explore how narratives surrounding millets are grounded in conceptions of cultural authenticity and bioregionalism. Drawing upon human geographer’s analyses of the turn towards the ‘local’ in food activism, I contribute to the development of critical bioregionalism, an emerging theoretical framework that explores how questions of value, identity, political economy, and histories of land use intersect to structure our understandings of marginal foods and their resurgence. (shrink)

For non-additive set functions, the independent product, in general, is not unique and the Fubini theorem is restricted to slice-comonotonic functions. In this paper, we use the representation theorem of Gilboa and Schmeidler (Math Oper Res 20:197–212, 1995) to extend the Möbius product for non-additive set functions to non-finite spaces. We extend the uniqueness result of Ghirardato (J Econ Theory 73:261–291, 1997) for products of two belief functions and weaken the requirements on the marginals necessary to obtain the (...) Fubini property in the product. More importantly, we show that for the Möbius product one side of the Fubini theorem holds for all integrable functions if one of the marginals either is a probability or a convex combination of a chain of unanimity games, i.e., we relax the requirement of slice-comonotonicity and enrich the set of possible applications. (shrink)

The intrinsic dynamics andinnovative potential of the rural poor in Chinacan be illustrated by the phenomena of farmerinnovation circles in north Shaanxi.These are informal networks used by farmers tocollaborate on technology learning andagricultural production. Though not limited tospecific geographic locations, these circlesare particularly important in the marginalareas of rural China where the complexity ofthe geographic environment, the diversity offarmer demands, and the inefficiency of formalagricultural extension networks impede thespread of new agricultural technologies. Socialconnectedness in the form of householdcommunication networks, technology (...) learninggroups, and inter-village links aids people's collective capacity to work together. In thestudy of 50 villages in this remote region, itwas found that households with more connectionswere more likely to adopt a range of newtechnologies, and so had higher income. Adetailed case study shows how collective actioncan lead to environmental improvements thatfurther increase incomes. It is concluded thatif there is to be sustainable development inthe marginal areas of China, then there willclearly need to be closer communication andinteraction between agricultural professionalsand rural communities. (shrink)

In this chapter, Mark Budolfson and Dean Spears analyse the marginal effect of philanthropic donations. The core of their analysis is the observation that marginal good done per dollar donated is a product (in the mathematical sense) of several factors: change in good done per change in activity level of the charity in question, change in activity per change in the charity’s budget size, and change in budget size per change in the individual’s donation to the charity (...) in question. They then discuss the “hidden zero problem” that some of the terms in the equation (in particular, the last term) might be “hidden zeros” that prevent donations from doing any good—or worse, imply that they do harm—even if the charity is at the top of effective altruism rankings based on the other factors. (shrink)

The scope of this research is to study the zine, which is a handmade booklet. The purpose is to reflect on what the zine is, discussing its format, reflecting on where it is inserted in the publishing market and what its cultural relevance is. This study is a theoretical and bibliographic research with a qualitative approach. We analyze three zines – Geração Beat, by Renato Alessandro dos Santos, O Ceifador de Privilégios, by Arthus Mehanna, and Libertemo-nos, by Melina Bassoli – (...) in order to understand their format, the ways of production, where they are inserted, and their themes. Afterwards, we notice characteristics that contribute to the dissemination of culture and democratic values, thus becoming an object of great cultural relevance.Keywords: Zine. Marginal Literature. Publishing market. (shrink)

The main focus of this special issue is on marginality, a multifaceted concept that requires a cross-disciplinary approach. The papers selected here deal with marginality in the formation of the epistemic canon (?the mainstream?) and the production of knowledge in the humanities and social sciences. By employing the vocabulary of marginality (?marginal,? ?margins,? ?luminal,? ?threshold,? as well as dichotomies such as ?minor-major,? ?center-periphery?), we propose a shift from a discussion of the canon in terms of just one category of (...) ?marginals? (a certain race, class, gender etc.) to considering this complex concept in terms of a plurality of players and factors related to marginality broadly defined, some of which have little or nothing to do with power structures and dichotomies. Marginality is thus conceived of as an epistemic category and not as a power status. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente trabajo busca reflexionar, desde la perspectiva de los estudios interartísticos, acerca de la práctica narrativa de Adolfo Couve, escritor y pintor chileno que tematiza el mundo plástico en toda su producción narrativa. A partir de una concepción desprejuiciada respecto de lo marginal, de la fealdad y la miseria, el autor despliega una mirada alterna en los espacios de borde en busca de la reivindicación de la miseria, a la vez que relativizar el canon estético que prestigia (...) temas y motivos lejanos al campo de referencia de quienes habitan el borde. La exhibición de aquellos espacios, los personajes y los paisajes minoritarios, su composición plástica y narrativa, sin embargo, dialogan permanentemente con la tradición pictórica de elite.: The present work seeks to reflect, from the perspective of interartistic studies, on the narrative practice of Adolfo Couve, Chilean writer and painter who thematizes the plastic world in all his narrative production. Starting from an unprejudiced conception regarding the marginal, the ugliness and the misery, our author displays an alternate look on the edge spaces in search of the vindication of the misery, at the same time that relativizes the aesthetic canon that prestige subjects and reasons far from the reference field of those who inhabit the edge. The exhibition of those spaces, the characters and the minority landscapes, their plastic and narrative composition, nevertheless, permanently dialogue with the pictorial tradition of elite. (shrink)

Legislative scholars have debated what factors (e.g. divided government) account for the number of important laws a legislative body passes per year. This paper presents a monopoly model for explaining legislative production. It assumes that a legislature adjusts its law production so as to maximize its utility. The model predicts that socio-economic and political changes increase the marginal benefit of law production, whereas low negotiation costs and ample legislative resources decrease the marginal cost of law production. The model (...) is tested in two ways. The first approach compares the legislatures of 42 developed and developing countries. The second analyzes Japanese lawmaking from 1949 to 1990, using an appropriate method for event count time series data. Both empirical investigations support the model's predictions for legislative production. (shrink)

Biofuels development has assumed an important role in integrating Indigenous peoples and other marginalized populations in the production of biofuels for global consumption. By combining the theories of commoditization and the environmental sociology of networks and flows, the author analyzed emerging trends and possible changes in institutions and behaviors brought about by the introduction of biofuels as a development option on ancestral lands. Using the Indonesian oil palm and the Philippine Jatropha experiences, the author argues that although there are efforts (...) to integrate smallholder systems to the global integrated biofuels network, the effects of commoditization continue to undermine the more sustainable, less commoditized agricultural practices of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples and their traditional agricultural practices are at risk of being either phased out from or eventually transformed by the global integrated biofuels network to accommodate large-scale, consolidated biofuel plantation systems. However, there are also indications that persistent criticisms of and enduring reforms in the global integrated biofuels network challenge the future of highly commoditized biofuels. This suggests that the coevolutionary trajectory of both highly commoditized biofuels and noncommoditized Indigenous agricultural practices remains uncertain. (shrink)

When a set of articles or essays in the Report revolves around some common theme, we have planned it that way only about half the time. With this issue, I realized halfway through its assembly that we would have two pieces on what one of the articles calls “the woman question.” Quite late in production, I realized that these two pieces were themselves part of a broader theme: several of the columns also address the health care of people who are (...) socially marginalized in one way or another. (shrink)

This paper explores the dynamic potential inherent in stable looking technological systems. I follow a small Finnish heating business and describe how alternative production practices were established within Finnish forestry. The case shows an interesting development in a sector where local activities have traditionally been coordinated through standardised practices and the physical structure of the forest. My focus is on micro-level shifts of power and I analyse the changing position of local actors in the margins of conventional forestry to understand (...) the fragile nature of the forestry standards. They not only stabilise forestry practices but enable complex interactions and new combinations of actors. Therefore, they also increase the degrees of freedom. My analysis draws from theoretical perspectives of technology studies, actor-network theory and recent discussions in geography on the spatial distribution of power. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine Richard Miller’s exposition of political solidarity as one of the key contributions of his multifaceted argument in Friends and Other Strangers to the study of religion, ethics, and culture. Miller’s focus on culture broadens the landscape of ethical analysis in ways that illuminate how culture and cultural productions mediate and construct norms and virtues, and the complex relations between self and society. I challenge Miller’s inclination, however, to focus scholarly attention more on habituated forms of (...) civic identity and communal solidarity rather than on disruptive potentialities and critical practices. I suggest that an engagement with social movement theory and the sociology of emotions, with their focus on semiotic analysis and social change processes and mechanisms, can greatly enrich Miller’s account of religion and ethical solidarity. (shrink)

As participatory research practices are increasingly taken up in health research, claims related to experiential authority and expertise are frequently made. Here, in an exploration of what grounds such claims, we consider how feminist standpoint theory might apply to the psy sciences (psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and so on). Standpoint theory claims that experiences of marginalization and critical engagement can lead to a standpoint that offers an epistemic advantage within a domain of knowledge. We examine experiences of marginalization and critical (...) engagement in the mental health system, as well as evidence for epistemic advantages resulting from these experiences. This evidence, found in the identification of problematic assumptions and the development of new tools and theories in the field, grounds our argument that standpoint theory is indeed relevant to the psy sciences and that many of those who have experienced marginalization and have engaged critically have an epistemic advantage when it comes to knowledge-production. The implications of this argument are significant: those who have attained a standpoint within the psy sciences ought to be included in research and given both tools and funding to develop research programs. However, we must be wary of the risks of tokenization, cooptation, and essentialization that are likely to accompany such a transformation. (shrink)

The Aru Islands are situated at the eastern end of the Indian Ocean, in the southern Moluccas. They are also one of the easternmost places in the world where Islam and Christianity gained a (limited) foothold in the early-modern period, and marked the outer reach of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The present article discusses Western-Arunese relations in the seventeenth century in terms of economic exchange and political networks. Although Aru society was stateless and relatively egalitarian and eluded strong (...) colonial control up to the late colonial period, it was still a source of natural products, such as pearls, birds-of-paradise, turtle-shells, destined for luxury consumption in Asia and Europe. Aru society was thus positioned in a global economic network while leaving it largely ungoverned. Colonial archival data yield important information about the indigenous responses to European attempts to control the flow of goods. They both support Roy Ellen’s claim that the economic flows in eastern Indonesia extended beyond the control of VOC, and provide parallels to James Scott’s thesis of state-avoidance among the ethnic minorities in mainland Southeast Asia. (shrink)

Science is a discipline defined by empiricism and reliable methodologies that result in predictable outcomes. Yet, cutting-edge experiments inevitably involve an element of the unknown, an aspect which science fiction exploits for dramatic effect. Furthermore, fictional science is freed from the ethical constraints that regulate real-world experimentation and is therefore often transgressive. Even as films capitalize on unethical practices and cutting-edge scenarios for dramatic and commercial reasons, the origin of the filmmaker and/or place of production may affect a film’s content. (...) A film is also obviously subject to legal constraints, according to the country of origin, and classification codes in its place of exhibition. Thus, while the very nature of science fiction may cause it to appear morally unbridled, there are nonetheless multiple inhibitions entrenched in such depictions. By drawing on relevant cinematic examples, including Prometheus, The Hunger Games and District 9, and scientific scenarios on which these films are based, this essay explores how the unpredictable nature of advances in science, in combination with a lack of ethics, foregrounds the dangerous dimensions of science fiction. (shrink)

This article draws upon thirteen months of ethnographic research in a Chicago pawnshop to show how prices of objects in pawnshops are actively, socially negotiated using what I term discursive strategies of valuation. Three kinds of discursive strategies of valuation emerge repeatedly in the data: a. references to the specific material attributes of the objects, b. references to the unique biographical histories of the objects, c. reference to the financial need and (relative) social positioning of the customer involved in the (...) negotiation. Examining these strategies reveals the relationship between socially contingent and culturally constructed perceptions of value and the production of price. I find that rhetorical strategies can and do affect price, within limits. Perhaps most surprisingly, the data show that discursive strategies emphasizing a lower socio-economic status can inflate the value, and ultimately the price, of an object during negotiations. (shrink)

Social and cultural contexts influence power dynamics and shape gender perceptions, roles, and decisions regarding the management of agrobiodiversity for dealing with and adapting to climate change. Based on a feminist political ecology framework and a mixed method approach, this research performs an empirical analysis of two case studies in the northern of India, one in the Himalayan Mountains and another in the Indian-Gangetic plains. It explores context-specific influence of gender roles and responsibilities on on-farm agrobiodiversity management gendered expertise and (...) knowledge related to agrobiodiversity and gendered preferences for practices and institutional arrangements for agrobiodiversity conservation linked to adaptation to climate change. In the Himalayan mountains women actively participate in crop and seed management decisions and tasks, and maintain informal institutions for seed and services exchanges in the case of crisis, which simultaneously favours high levels of agrobiodiversity and enhances women’s social status. By contrast, in the Indio-Gangetic plains, where women from better-off households are socially secluded and women from poorer households work mainly as labourer to respond to high out-migration of men, they exercise less public control over agrobiodiversity, with their role being mainly invisible at the homestead and related to post-production tasks. We finally discuss as improved understanding of the links between gendered spaces, crops, tasks, social status, and agrobiodiversity management can facilitate the design of gender-sensitive policy interventions for conservation and adaptation to climate change. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that nurses need to be aware of how the production of space in specific contexts – including health care systems and research institutions – perpetuates marginalized populations' state of social otherness. Lefebvre's idea regarding spatial triad is mobilized in this paper, as it pertains to two‐spirited, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer populations (2SLGBTQ*). We believe that nurses can create counter‐spaces within health care systems and research institutions that challenge normative discourses. Lefebvre's work provides us (...) the necessary tools to understand how various places or environments produce identities. In understanding Lefebvre's principles, we believe that nurses can play an essential role in creating counter‐spaces, thereby instigating counter‐institutional practices, for those who experience otherness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beyond the Aesthetic Garden: Politics and Culture on the Margins of Fin-de Siècle ViennaScott SpectorThe rhetorical structure supporting Carl E. Schorske’s seminal Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture 1 is frankly exposed. The argument—which may have single-handedly changed the discipline of cultural history—is an apparently simple one, and it is reasserted in this series of essays on diverse areas of cultural activity through the use of recurring metaphors. Schorske’s famous (...) thesis (modern culture as political surrogate for a marginalized liberal bourgeoisie) is represented through constantly resurfacing dichotomies: liberal political engagement and (vs.) the aesthetic “garden” of modern art; history and (vs.) desire and “the psyche”; politics and (vs.) culture. All of this is well known. In this essay I want both to assess our necessary debt to Schorske’s powerful work and to suggest what lies beyond it. If at the end of our own century we want to rethink Schorske’s founding project of an interdisciplinary cultural history of Central Europe, we cannot limit this initiative to the obviously important question of extending the contents of cultural inquiry (from high culture to popular culture, from the hegemonic nationality to non-German-speaking cultures, from patriarchy to the voices of women). The formal question packed up in the image of refuge from the historico-political in the aesthetic garden or the fortress of the psyche may offer most productive access to rethinking the Schorskean paradigm, instead of merely expanding its scope. For these reasons I want to focus on the rhetorical structure of Schorske’s essay collection against that of aesthetic and critical works from the Central European turn of the century. 2 Schorske’s historical analysis seems to be at odds [End Page 691] with these projects seen on their own terms—but to utter this is ironically to reiterate the tension between history or politics and aesthetic modernism articulated in the essays.The question at hand is hence two-fold. First of all, what is ideologically at stake in a historiographical construction that identifies Central European modernist aesthetic innovation as an escape from history and politics? Schorske’s interdisciplinary project of contextualization (his significant subtitle “Politics and Culture” has become an unshakable legacy for cultural history) is peculiar insofar as his diagnosis is that culture became increasingly isolated from political life. I have chosen to focus on the rhetorical opposition of “center” and “margin” in this essay because of Schorske’s implicit claim that the very class which was central to nineteenth-century Austrian liberalism—the German-speaking bourgeoisie—was “marginalized” by the rise of hostile anti-liberal ideologies (the “culture-makers” were “alienated along with their class in its extrusion from political power”). 3 As I hope to show, this geometry of center and margins was at the heart of the most innovative and potentially explosive play within so-called aestheticist texts around 1900. This brings us to the second half of this two-fold question: how might the “aesthetic moment” of the Central European fin de siècle be seen if we wish to go beyond Schorske’s diagnosis of a forced retreat into the temple of art, the fortress of the psyche, or the aesthetic garden? To get at both sides of this question—the ideological valence of the aesthetic moment and of its histories—I will focus on literary products, in particular on essays, for several reasons. One of these is that Schorske’s synthetic work is, after all, itself a collection of essays published over two decades.The privileging of the essay genre in coming to terms with the problem of turn-of-the-century aestheticism was established long before Schorske’s work. If we can find early examples of this generic strategy in fin-de-siècle authors such as Musil and Broch, the paradigmatic instance—and the place where the function of the essay-critique within aestheticist criticism is worked through—is the collection of Georg Lukács, Soul and Forms. 4 Several positions are taken in that work which may be useful to an understanding of Schorske’s essay project: Lukács asserts the essay’s fragmentary nature at... (shrink)

Despite globalization a progressively increasing economic and financial concentration in the ‘cores’ of the world economy (e.g. EU) as well as the rise of new socioeconomic marginalization of peripheries (e.g. Maghreb and Mashraq) has been observed since the early 1980s. Marginalization has produced its own models of specialization in production which reflect in various countries and regions the needs of the ‘cores’ economy forces. A regional strategy for regional co-operation, so called co-development, is advanced to overcome the current economic and (...) social problems faced by marginalized regions in relation to world economic trends. (shrink)

Here, I offer a candid response to bell hooks's call for a testimony to the “movement beyond a mere ‘us and them’ discussion” that purportedly informs contemporary radical and feminist thought on difference. In alignment with a tradition that includes bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Aurora Levins Morales, I offer a personal testimony to the ways in which I—a middle-class, French, immigrant, continental-philosophy-bred incest survivor—envision both that movement and its limits. To establish these alliances means forming necessary communities. (...) I call on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to propose an account of the production of such communities that does not depend only on shared lived experience, but also on shared marginal spatiality, temporality, and “medicinal history”. I suggest that on the one hand, Deleuze's philosophy of immanence may indeed find apt expression in the politics of integrity that hooks, Lorde, and Morales call for. On the other hand, a genuine politics of integrity may benefit from drawing on the philosophy of immanence, which alone offers alternatives to the traditional, oppositional models of difference informed by transcendence. Finally, I propose the concept of “immanent forgiveness” to capture the movement at issue. (shrink)

This paper proposes a Cournot game organized by three competing firms adopting bounded rationality. According to the marginal profit in the past time step, each firm tries to update its production using local knowledge. In this game, a firm’s preference is represented by a utility function that is derived from a constant elasticity of substitution production function. The game is modeled by a 3-dimensional discrete dynamical system. The equilibria of the system are numerically studied to detect their complex characteristics (...) due to difficulty to get an explicit form for those equilibria. For the proposed utility function, some cases with different value parameters are considered. Numerical simulations are used to provide an experimental evidence for the complex behavior of the evolution of the system. The obtained results show that the system loses its stability due to different types of bifurcations. (shrink)

The communal composition and recitation of poems, as the marker of cultural distinction, constituted the central activities in the social networking of educated elites throughout premodern Korea. Poetry societies, therefore, had prospered in elite circles until the dawn of the modern period. This literary culture trickled down to nonelites during the late Chosŏn period. Some poetry societies of secondary status groups developed into centers of literary production in turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Seoul; prominent yangban elites willingly joined them, and their events attracted attention (...) from poets across the country irrespective of their social status. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a surge in popularity of the fair-trade industry, which seeks to improve trading conditions and to promote the rights of marginalized workers. Although research suggests that fair-trade products are perceived as promoting social and economic responsibility, some individuals—namely, those who seek to maintain existing group inequalities or those induced to think inequality is a good thing—may not share this perception. Across three studies, we found that SDO relates negatively to fair-trade consumption, and this relationship (...) is mediated by the tendency for high-SDO individuals to see fair-trade products as less compatible with their conception of social justice. Our findings held after controlling for related individual-differences variables, and regardless of whether SDO was measured or manipulated. Implications for how to maximize the likelihood that people will perceive fair-trade products as “fair” are discussed. (shrink)

The aim of this study is twofold. Firstly, it intends to highlight the value of constructivist insights for religious studies by showing that various forms of approach to issues related to religion are mere constructs. In contrast to this viewpoint, the discipline of religious studies had traditionally sought a higher degree of objectivity in the scientific reflection of religious topics, but that has been a fraught path. Secondly, the example it refers to is worthy in itself. The reception of Judaism (...) in contemporary China is not only an under-investigated topic endowed with a great potential to reveal to what extent the Chinese ordinary man as well as the academic succeed to understand Western thought and to differentiate among the varied cultural traditions generally subsumed by them under the notion Western, but it also shows that the constructivist approaches preserve their validity in non-European contexts as well. Judaism’s reception in contemporary China will be pursued on four different levels: popular literature, fake books, articles in the Christian Chinese media and academic productions. The four categories of texts represent four different degrees of comprehension of the object of study, primarily offering information about the worldviews of the authors of the texts. The process of reception of thought is regarded as a form of encounter where the active part is striving to get out of its own mindset and move towards the other. (shrink)

Este artículo trata sobre el filósofo chileno Jenaro Abasolo. Se expone en él, primeramente, la producción literaria de Abasolo y la nula receptividad que su obra tuvo en los círculos intelectuales de su tiempo, aludiendo, a la vez, al concepto central de su filosofía, es decir, la idea de personalidad. Luego, y más extensamente, se presentan las consideraciones de Abasolo respecto de algunas de las problemáticas sociales y económicas discutidas en los inicios de la República, abordando temas como la moral, (...) la religión, el fin social y la libertad. This artick is a treatise on the Chilean philosopher Jenaro Abasólo. Vrimarilj, it exposes Abasólo, his literary production, and the complete lack of attention that his oeuvre recieved from the intellectual áreles of his period. It alludes, at the same time, to the central concept of his philosophy, Le., the idea of personality. Later and more extensively, it presents Abasolo’s considerations regarding social and economic issues discussed at the beginning of the Republic, addressing topics such as morality, religión, social order and freedom. (shrink)

Este artículo trata sobre el filósofo chileno Jenaro Abasolo. Se expone en él, primeramente, la producción literaria de Abasolo y la nula receptividad que su obra tuvo en los círculos intelectuales de su tiempo, aludiendo, a la vez, al concepto central de su filosofía, es decir, la idea de personalidad. Luego, y más extensamente, se presentan las consideraciones de Abasolo respecto de algunas de las problemáticas sociales y económicas discutidas en los inicios de la República, abordando temas como la moral, (...) la religión, el fin social y la libertad. This artick is a treatise on the Chilean philosopher Jenaro Abasólo. Vrimarilj, it exposes Abasólo, his literary production, and the complete lack of attention that his oeuvre recieved from the intellectual áreles of his period. It alludes, at the same time, to the central concept of his philosophy, Le., the idea of personality. Later and more extensively, it presents Abasolo’s considerations regarding social and economic issues discussed at the beginning of the Republic, addressing topics such as morality, religión, social order and freedom. (shrink)

Some Austro-German philosophers considered thoughts to be mind-dependent entities, that is, psychic products. Yet these authors also attrib- uted “objectivity” to thoughts: distinct thinking subjects can have mental acts with “qualitatively” the same content. Moreover, thoughts, once built, can exist beyond the life of their inventor, “embodied” in “documents”. At the beginning of the 20th century, the notion of “psychic product” was at the centre of the debates on psychologism; a hundred years later, it is rather at the margins (...) of the history of philosophy. While Twardowski’s theory of products has been fre- quently studied, those of Stumpf and the late Husserl have been much less dis- cussed. A presentation of the Austro-German debates about psychic products is all the more important since these discussions might be of direct interest for contemporary philosophy of mind and epistemology. This paper examines the Austro-German notion of psychic products in Stumpf, Twardowski, and the later Husserl. (shrink)

Twenty-five years ago, robotics guru Joseph Engelberger had a mission to motivate research teams all over the world to design the ‘Elderly Care Giver’, a multitasking personal robot assistant for everyday care needs in old age. In this article, we discuss how this vision of omnipotent care robots has influenced the design strategies of care robotics, the development of R&D initiatives and ethics research on use of care robots. Despite the expectations of robots revolutionizing care of older people, the role (...) of robots in human care has remained marginal. The value of world trade in service robots, including care robots, is rather small. We argue that the implementation of robots in care is not primarily due to negative user attitudes or ethical problems, but to problems in R&D and manufacturing. The care robots currently available on the market are capable of simple, repetitive tasks or colloquial interaction. Thus far, also research on care robots is mostly conducted using imaginary scenarios or small-scale tests built up for research purposes. To develop useful and affordable robot solutions that are ethically, socially and ecologically sustainable, we suggest that robot initiatives should be evaluated within the framework of care ecosystems. This implies that attention has to be paid to the social, emotional and practical contexts in which care is given and received. Also, the political, economic and ecological realities of organizing care and producing technological commodities have to be acknowledged. It is time to openly discuss the drivers behind care robot initiatives to outline the bigger picture of organizing care under conditions of limited resources. (shrink)

This note suggests that, viewed from a feminist perspective, the reforms contained in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 represent a missed opportunity to re-think the appropriate model of regulation to govern fertility treatment and embryology research in the UK. It argues that reform of the legislation was driven largely by the government’s desire to avoid re-igniting controversies over the legal status of the embryo and abortion and to maintain Britain’s position at the forefront of embryo research and related (...) biotechnologies. It also highlights the importance of media debates, which were highly selective, to the reform process, and suggests that in order to inject feminist values into the process of legislative reform, feminists need to become more media savvy. In the short term, it suggests that there is little prospect of a radical re-thinking of the appropriate ethico-legal response to the wide variety of family forms that reproductive technologies potentially enable, much less of considering our ethical obligations to the new forms of embryos that are now permitted by the 2008 Act. In the meantime, however, it argues that these issues provide productive opportunities for feminist legal theorists to address questions that have been erased or obscured in the course of the 2008 reforms. (shrink)

This article makes first use of a set of databases that are authoritative, independent, and consistent to examine an old research question: do firms hurt their financial performance by damaging stakeholder interests? The databases are US government on-line listings of fines for environmental breaches, unsafe workplaces, fraudulent accounting standards, and product recalls. These measures are assumed to proxy for signals to stakeholders of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks in transacting with the firm and appear to have fewer (...) biases than conventional measures of stakeholder standards. Using a sample of all non-financial S& P 500 firms during the most recent 1998-2003 full cycle in the market, after controlling for firm-specific differences, sales margins of firms fell by 0.8% if they announced a product recall and by 0.4% if cited by OSHA for an unsafe workplace; and shareholder return was significantly reduced by an EPA or SEC prosecution. This study links the risk of transaction uncertainty, information signaling theory, and the resource-based view of the firm to company financial performance. Results support the normative assumption that a firm's sales margin will be damaged by unethical treatment of stakeholders as evidenced by ESG breaches, presumably because risk-averse customers and suppliers are alert to signals of counterparty risk. (shrink)

This article draws upon data collected as part of a 25-year longitudinal analysis of televised coverage of women’s sports to provide a window into how sexism operates during a postfeminist sociohistorical moment. As the gender order has shifted to incorporate girls’ and women’s movement into the masculine realm of sports, coverage of women’s sports has shifted away from overtly denigrating coverage in 1989 to ostensibly respectful but lackluster coverage in 2014. To theorize this shift, we introduce the concept of “gender-bland (...) sexism,” a contemporary gender framework that superficially extends the principles of merit to women in sports. Televised news and highlight shows frame women in uninspired ways, making women’s athletic accomplishments appear lackluster compared to those of men’s. Because this “bland” language normalizes a hierarchy between men’s and women’s sports while simultaneously avoiding charges of overt sexism, this article contributes to gender theory by illuminating how women can be marginalized in male-dominated, male-controlled settings via individualized merit-based assessments of talent. (shrink)