The continued advance of global value chains as the mode of production for an increasing number of goods and services has impacted considerably on the economies and societies both of the developed world and the emerging economies. Although there have been many efforts at reform there is evidence of unresolved dilemmas of human rights, environmental issues and ethical dilemmas in the operation of the global value chain. This paper focuses on the role and performance of Apple Inc in the global value chain in Asia. Apple is the most successful corporation on earth measured in financial terms and yet has failed to find a solution to recurrent employment and environmental problems occurring in plants manufacturing Apple components. This analysis informs the current theoretical debate on the development of the global value chain and the continuing institutional failure that leaves employees vulnerable and the environment neglected.

https://www.companydirectors.com.au/~/media/resources/Director-Resource-Centre/GLC/Clarke-and-Boersma-2015-The-Governance-of-Global-Value-Chains-Unresolved.pdf

The Governance of Global Value Chains: Unresolved Human Rights, Environmental and Ethical Dilemmas in the Apple Supply Chain

For almost half a century Professor Gershom Scholem has pioneered research in the history of Jewish mysticism and spirituality. The English-speaking world became acquainted with his work through Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism ( 1941 ) . Succeeding volumes of his writings have each been acclaimed as definitive. His publisher, Schocken Books, has been publishing translations of his most important essays, the first volume of which appeared in 1965 under the title On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. The present volume is a collection of essays previously published in English, as well as translations of essays in German and Hebrew.

Comptes rendus / Reviews of books: The Messianic Idea in Judaism and other studies in Jewish Spirituality GERSHOM G. SCHOLEM New York: Schocken Books 1971. 350. $15.00:

This article contends that what appear to be the dystopic conditions of affective capitalism are just as likely to be felt in various joyful encounters as they are in atmospheres of fear associated with post 9/11 securitization. Moreover, rather than grasping these joyful encounters with capitalism as an ideological trick working directly on cognitive systems of belief, they are approached here by way of a repressive affective relation a population establishes between politicized sensory environments and what Deleuze and Guattari (1994) call a brain-becoming-subject. This is a radical relationality (Protevi, 2010) understood in this context as a mostly nonconscious brain-somatic process of subjectification occurring in contagious sensory environments populations become politically situated in. The joyful encounter is not therefore merely an ideological manipulation of belief, but following Gabriel Tarde (as developed in Sampson, 2012), belief is always the object of desire.
The discussion starts by comparing recent efforts by Facebook to manipulate mass emotional contagion to a Huxleyesque control through appeals to joy. Attention is then turned toward further manifestations of affective capitalism; beginning with the
so-called emotional turn in the neurosciences, which has greatly influenced marketing strategies intended to unconsciously influence consumer mood (and choice), and ending with a further comparison between encounters with Nazi joy in the 1930s (Protevi, 2010) and the recent spreading of right wing populism similarly loaded with political affect. Indeed, the dystopian presence of a repressive political affect in all of these examples prompts an initial question concerning what can be done to a brain so that it involuntarily conforms to the joyful encounter. That is to say, what can affect theory say about an apparent brain-somatic vulnerability to affective suggestibility and a tendency toward mass repression? However, the paper goes on to frame a second (and perhaps more significant) question concerning what can a brain do. Through the work of John Protevi (in Hauptmann and Neidich (eds.), 2010: 168-183), Catherine Malabou (2009) and Christian Borch (2005), the article discusses how affect theory can conceive of a brain-somatic relation to sensory environments that might be freed from its coincidence with capitalism. This second question not only leads to a different kind of illusion to that understood as a product of an ideological trick, but also abnegates a model of the brain which limits subjectivity in the making to a phenomenological inner self or Being in the world.

Various Joyful Encounters with the Dystopias of Affective Capitalism

In this paper we disrupt established methodological boundaries in consumer research. We embark on a creative exploration to address the lack of an appropriate methodological toolkit. Graphic narrat...

The ethno/graphic novel: alternative shapes of knowledge and hyper-intensity in consumer research

The issue of legitimacy or illegitimacy of power is central for practices of democracy, critical dialogue, and education. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the legitimacy of power among the participants in Democratic Dialogic Education. Although in the modern practices of political democracy and existing institutionalized education, the presence of power is not an issue—they all are heavily based on power—the question is whether and how much this power is legitimate and desired for flourishing democracy, dialogue, and education. Starting from the Age of Enlightenment, if not before in ancient Greece, the legitimacy of authority and power in general has been under suspicion. There have been philosophical efforts to delegitimize power and authority, fully eliminate them, or at least subordinate them to intellectual endeavors of a pursuit of reason, science, hard facts, laws of nature, smart democratic procedures, and rational consensus. However, some other scholars argue that this approach ironically leads to results opposite to those that have been envisioned by the Enlightenment movement: violence, intolerance, wars, illiberalism, dogmatism, corruption, fanaticism, irrationality, repressions, and suppression of dissent. Following this criticism, we will try to rehabilitate the notion of authority and power in Democratic Dialogic Education (and, in our lesser focus, in democracy) and discuss what diverse interplays between power and critical dialogue may look like as a result of this legitimacy of power. Before we start, we want to provide a few definitions of the terms we use here. In our view, “power” involves the imposition of ideas, wills, and demands on people who would not engage in these ideas, wills, and demands on their own without this imposition. We define “authority” as legitimate power recognized by the people on whom power is imposed. We view “critical dialogue” as (primarily) ontological testing of ideas similar to Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s (1991) notion of “internally persuasive discourse”, where “internal” is defined as internal to the discourse and not necessarily to an individual (Matusov and von Duyke, 2010).

http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/vita/Articles/Matusov,%20Marjanovic-Shane,%20Rehabilitation%20of%20power%20in%20Democratic%20Dialogic%20Education,%202015.pdf

Rehabilitation of Power in Democratic Dialogic Education 1

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology. Film. Directed by Sophie Fiennes. Zeitgeist Films, 2012. DVD, $29.99.

Orange is the New Black. Television. Season 3. Created by Jenji Kohan. Netflix, 2015.

ABSTRACT Municipalities are important to age-friendly policy implementation and need to be engaged to bring about the desired physical changes and community supports. As a governing unit, municipalities can allocate resources and leverage their capacity by acting in certain ways. As a planning process, age-friendly policies should be embedded in all levels of municipal government to ensure that maximum public benefits can be leveraged. Three strategies effectively illustrate the opportunity toward internal municipal collaboration: analytic mapping enables policy makers to visualize the captured value of public amenities; policy mapping reveals where departments are reinforcing or contradicting age-friendly policy actions; and effective advocacy builds public support and guides municipal agenda setting. San Antonio, Texas, provides a context to illustrate how the strategies can be implemented to further the goal of age-friendly planning as demonstrated through their commitment and designation as an AARP Age-Friendly Community. This replicable framework will help cities pursing age-friendly policy action to forge connections across departments, policy makers, community partners, and the public toward broader policy implementation. Key Points Age-friendly planning should not fall to local departments of senior services only. Planning coordination of age-friendly policy results in more diverse outcomes. Mapping is a tool helping policy makers visualize alternative opportunities. Maps give stakeholders the ability to track and monitor progress. This approach is easily replicable for cities implementing age-friendly programs.

Aligning Policy, Place and Public Value: Planning Age Friendly Cities in Municipal Organizations

In the beginning, says the ancient Hindu text the Rg Veda, was man. And from man's sacrifice and dismemberment came the entire world, including the hierarchical ordering of human society. The Head Beneath the Altar is the first book to present a wide-ranging study of Hindu texts read through the lens of Rene Girard's mimetic theory of the sacrificial origin of religion and culture. For those interested in Girard and comparative religion, the book also performs a careful reading of Girard's work, drawing connections between his thought and the work of theorists like Georges Dumezil and Giorgio Agamben. Brian Collins examines the idea of sacrifice from the earliest recorded rituals through the flowering of classical mythology and the ancient Indian institutions of the duel, the oath, and the secret warrior society. He also uncovers implicit and explicit critiques in the tradition, confirming Girard's intuition that Hinduism offers an alternative anti-sacrificial worldview to the one contained in the gospels.

Brian Collins

Papers

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology. Film. Directed by Sophie Fiennes. Zeitgeist Films, 2012. DVD, $29.99.

Orange is the New Black. Television. Season 3. Created by Jenji Kohan. Netflix, 2015.

Aligning Policy, Place and Public Value: Planning Age Friendly Cities in Municipal Organizations

The Head Beneath the Altar: Hindu Mythology and the Critique of Sacrifice

Game of Thrones. Television. Season 5. Created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. HBO, 2013.