The Rise of the Creative Class

Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia.

The politics of life itself Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century

Thirty-three brothels in rural and small-town Nevada, which contain between 225 and 250 prostitutes, are legal or openly tolerated and strictly controlled by state statute, city and county ordinances, and local rules. Twenty-two of the brothels are in places with populations between 500 and 8,000, and the remaining eleven are in rural areas. The legal and quasi-legal restrictions placed on prostitutes severely limit their activities outside brothels. These restrictions in conjunction with historical inertia, perceived benefits of crime and venereal disease control, and the good image of madams contribute to widespread positive local attitudes toward brothel prostitution. Interactions between clients and prostitutes in brothel parlors are also restricted and limited to a few basic types which are largely determined by entrepreneurial philosophy. KEY WORDS : Nevada, Political geography, Prostitution, Restricted activity spaces.

ANNALS of the Association of American Geographers

The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding

Toronto is experiencing a building boom, with eight major cultural construction projects in the works. These new monuments, part of what the City of Toronto calls its “Cultural Renaissance,” are intended to bolster the city’s reputation as an international economic and cultural capital. Albeit architecturally important, these buildings are better understood in the context of contemporary patterns of global economic competition and the changing role of culture in capitalist production. They also assert national identity and reflect a reorientation of Canadian cultural policy. This paper analyzes Toronto’s “Cultural Renaissance” in light of changing cultural policies at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels, examining the role these new buildings will play in terms of promoting cultural tourism, city “branding,” and nationalism. Resume : La ville de Toronto connait actuellement un boum immobilier comprenant huit projets culturels majeurs. Ces nouveaux monuments, qui feront partie de ce qu’elle appelle une « Renaissance culturelle », visent a accroitre la reputation de la ville en tant que capitale economique et culturelle internationale. Ces immeubles sont importants du point de vue architectural, mais leur fonction se comprend mieux dans le contexte de la concurrence economique mondiale actuelle et du role changeant de la culture dans la production capitaliste. Ils affirment en outre l’identite nationale et refletent une reorientation de la politique culturelle canadienne. Cet article analyse cette « Renaissance culturelle » torontoise a la lumiere des politiques culturelles changeantes aux niveaux municipal, provincial et federal, examinant le role que ces nouveaux immeubles joueront dans la promotion du tourisme culturel et du nationalisme et dans la mise en valeur de la ville en tant que « marque ».

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Toronto's Cultural Renaissance

Governments around the world have accepted the idea that spending on culture can have economic side‐effects such as attracting high technology industry, regenerating urban economies, or increasing a country’s status in the global economy. As governments increased their cultural spending, however, critics charged that their interest reflected an instrumental approach to funding the arts that prioritized large cultural organizations and iconic building projects with the potential to attract tourists over more mundane matters such as operating funding. This study examines flows of government and private funding to cultural organizations in the province of Ontario, Canada on the basis of the size of these organizations. The data show that in real terms, government operating grants to organizations that have received large infrastructural grants for building projects were lower in 2006 than in the pre‐spending cut era of 1990. When a larger group of arts organizations is examined by size, the reality is more c...

Cultural spending in Ontario, Canada: trends in public and private funding

We investigated the interface between biomedia and humans by inviting participants to interact with biometric devices that measured and visualized their body data. At first, they struggled with the...

Bodily Intra-actions with Biometric Devices:

The recent implementation of various guaranteed basic income (GBI) trials presents an opportunity to consider how such policies should be evaluated. If past experience is any guide, they will be ju...

A guaranteed basic income and the aesthetics of existence

The popularity of deconstructivist architecture around the world has invited controversy over the sensationalist design of these buildings. New urbanists, in particular, have criticized decon architecture as alienating and disorienting. From a historical perspective, this opposition between deconstructivists and new urbanists is the latest in a long line of debates over what constitutes “good design.” Using a political-economy approach based on the work of Karl Polanyi, this article examines a centuries-long dialectic in design ideology between those who seek to embed design in social mores and those who attempt to “disembed” it from oppressive discourses. This analysis shows that the dialectic of design movements is intimately connected to the development of capitalist markets.

Barbara Jenkins

Papers

Toronto's Cultural Renaissance

Cultural spending in Ontario, Canada: trends in public and private funding

Bodily Intra-actions with Biometric Devices:

A guaranteed basic income and the aesthetics of existence

The Dialectics of Design