Showing papers in "Thesis Eleven in 1998"
TL;DR: Globalization cuts both ways as discussed by the authors and not only valorizes the local in a cultural sense, but constructs the local as the tribal in a political sense, by reallocating poverty and stigma from above without even the residual responsibility of noblesse oblige.
Abstract: Globalization cuts both ways. Not only does it valorize the local in a cultural sense, it constructs the local as the tribal. Processes of geopolitical fragmentation give those in power even more room to manoeuvre. Glocalization involves the reallocation of poverty and stigma from above without even the residual responsibility of noblesse oblige. Geographical and social mobility are dichotomized; populations are refigured as tourists and vagabonds. Globalization thus reinforces already existing patterns of domination, while globalization indicates trends to dispersal and conflict on neo-traditional grounds. The privileged walk, or fly away; the others take revenge upon each other.
237 citations
TL;DR: The conclusion will introduce the notion of `underdetermination' of theories, which imposes an intrinsic limitation on models of complex natural systems - a limitation that, at the same time, may be precisely what makes possible mutual understanding and intersubjectivity.
Abstract: This article addresses the question of the mechanisms of the emergence of structure and meaning in the biological and physical sciences. It proceeds from an examination of the concept of intentionality and proposes a model of intentional behavior on the basis of results of computer simulations of structural and functional self-organization. Current attempts to endow intuitive aspects of meaningful complexity with operational content are analyzed and the metaphor of DNA as a computer program (the `genetic program') is critically examined in relation to an alternative metaphor of DNA as data. It is argued that relatively simple networks of boolean automata can classify and recognize patterns of binary strings on the basis of non-programmed, self-generated criteria, but lack a capacity for self-observation and interpretation. To overcome this problem it is necessary to clarify the relationships between the goals and underlying mechanisms of a process and between a system and its environment. It will be shown...
26 citations
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TL;DR: The distinction between centre and periphery cannot be copied into the national political system, which means that economic policy can no longer be decided through political choice as discussed by the authors. But this distinction has lost its informational value for party politics.
Abstract: Fundamental changes in the world economic system have resulted in a new differentiation, that between centre and periphery, between a global financial market on the one hand and production, services and labour on the other. As modern society has now become financial society, the old distinction between capital and labour has lost its informational value for party politics. The fact that the distinction between centre and periphery cannot be copied into the national political system means that economic policy can no longer be decided through political choice. Politics has the task of coping with the political effects of the global financial market with the result that elections are dependent on the state of the economic cycle. Would a new political alignment involve a centre party of capital and labour against an ecological left and a `law and order' right?
20 citations
TL;DR: One reason for the problematic status of the social sciences is that their claim to legitimacy has been undermined by two opposite models of inquiry: the nomothetic idea of science, with its emphasis... as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: One reason for the problematic status of the social sciences is that their claim to legitimacy has been undermined by two opposite models of inquiry: the nomothetic idea of science, with its emphas...
17 citations
TL;DR: In the post-war communist countries, Gypsies were forced to give up their traditional ways of life and become productive as discussed by the authors, leading to the Gypsy Holocaust, and the persecution of Gypsy people continued in Europe after the big changes of 1989 and up to the present time.
Abstract: Since their arrival in Europe in the Middle Ages the Gypsies have suffered from discrimination on the grounds of racial prejudice. In the 20th century the NAZI doctrine lead to Porrajmos - the Gypsy Holocaust. In the post-war communist countries, Gypsies were forced to give up their traditional ways of life and become productive. Persecution of Gypsies - those who stayed in the post-communist countries and those who migrated to the West - continued in Europe after the big changes of 1989 and up to the present time.
11 citations
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TL;DR: The authors argue that contemporary diasporic identities provide a strong basis from which to oppose contemporary expressions of racism, arguing that immigrants and mobile populations have been able to construct images of identity that are based neither on an assimilationist model, nor defensive strategies against assimilationism.
Abstract: This paper argues that contemporary diasporic identities provide a strong basis from which to oppose contemporary expressions of racism. Immigrant and mobile populations have been able to construct images of identity that are based neither on an assimilationist model, nor defensive strategies against assimilationism. Rather, the older, internal relation between racism and diasporization has been broken by the ability of groups to claim a diasporic status on the basis of a public and not private articulation of self-identity.
7 citations
TL;DR: Zygmunt Bauman's sociology has had a paradoxical reception, widespread, yet elusive Partly this is due to its diversity, partly due to Bauman style, which is often provocative rather than sooth.
Abstract: Zygmunt Bauman's sociology has had a paradoxical reception, widespread, yet elusive Partly this is due to its diversity, partly due to Bauman's style, which is often provocative rather than soothi
6 citations
6 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that at the century's end we may witness the disappearance of the great productivist utopias of the 1920s and 1930s, and that the crisis of productivist systems and ideologies may be far more significant than the more narrowly defined crisis of communism, or of ''Fordism'' that many critics have identified.
Abstract: Are we rapidly approaching the end of the work-centered society? This article contends that at the century's end we may witness the disappearance of the great productivist utopias of the 1920s and 1930s. The crisis of productivist systems and ideologies may be far more significant than the more narrowly defined crisis of communism, or of `Fordism', that many critics have identified. Shifts in the forms of metaphor and the technology of work are taking place which call into question traditional notions of the biopolitics of work. Modern productivism - the productivism of the industrial revolution - was governed by the belief that human society and nature are linked by the primacy and ultimate interchangeability (convertibility) of all productive activity. It presupposes a metaphor of the motor which first appeared during the first quarter of the 19th century. With the eclipse of the metaphor of the human motor, we can ask whether the end of the `work-centered model of society' might be attributed to the de...
6 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the concepts of post-industrialism and post-postmodernism are examined as presented by six major writers, and none makes a convincing case for the establishment of an historical disjunction that separates modernism from postmodernism either during the 1960s or at any other time.
Abstract: Evidence evinced primarily from the visual arts suggests that the term `postmodernism' is unlikely to survive as a general description of contemporary culture beyond the year 2000. The concepts of both post-industrialism and postmodernism are examined as presented by six major writers. None makes a convincing case for the establishment of an historical disjunction that separates modernism from postmodernism either during the 1960s or at any other time. There is a need to recognize that the modernism of the late 19th and early 20th century is no longer modern. It would be better described as the formalesque. This will make it possible to recognize the `postmodern' as the true modernism of the 20th century, the prime sources of which lie in Dada, surrealism and the Neue Sachlichkeit.
6 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the justifications of these two models in their radical versions, with a special focus on the experience of self-respect, and concludes that the benefits that traditionally are associated with paid work function better in justifying a right to basic income than a right-to-work.
Abstract: Unemployment in Europe is currently a major challenge. Two models for solving the problem are frequently proposed: a work model, which in its radical version institutes a legally binding right to employment, and a basic income model, which in its radical form establishes a universal, unconditional right to income security. In practice, western democracies have experimented with mixed forms of both models, with a greater emphasis on guaranteeing work. This article examines the justifications of these two models in their radical versions, with a special focus on the experience of self-respect. The conclusion is that the benefits that traditionally are associated with paid work function better in justifying a right to basic income than a right to work.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore parallels between Marx's and Schumpeter's theories of capitalist development, and discuss the relationship of these classical approaches to later constructivist theories of technological and organizational changes.
Abstract: This article explores parallels between Marx's and Schumpeter's theories of capitalist development, and discusses the relationship of these classical approaches to later constructivist theories of technological and organizational changes. It is suggested that Marxian and Schumpeterian ideas could be combined in a way which remedies the weaknesses of both sides, and provides a better understanding of the innovative dynamics of capitalism; such a synthesis could then be linked to a constructivist model of the rise and fall of economic `myths'.
TL;DR: This article assess the impact of the vigorous liberal economic reforms of the 1980s on economic management and steering, social integration and cohesion, on the public sector, on civil society and the public sphere.
Abstract: In this century Australia has enjoyed the highest per capita incomes and probably the most equal distribution of income of any nation in the world. Australia has been a lighthouse social democracy. We assess the impact of the vigorous liberal economic reforms of the 1980s on economic management and steering, social integration and cohesion, on the public sector, on civil society and the public sphere. We see that the reforms have been ideologically driven and that they have negatively affected the distribution of income, the deliberative capacity of the policy apparatus, and the unique institutional features of social democracy in Australia.
TL;DR: For example, the authors discusses the metaphors implicit in the names given to the region, the South Seas, the Pacific and Oceania, and relates their imagining in the early European expeditions of Balboa and Magellan, in Hodges' paintings done on Cook's second voyage in the 18th century, and in conceptualizations of Australian identity from the colonial period to the mid-20th century writing of historians such as Hancock, Barnard and Manning Clark.
Abstract: Little appears to have changed in the western imagining of the Pacific region since ancient times. While metaphors of redemption and condemnation, paradise and paradise lost, utopia and dystopia persist, Australia's place in the Pacific will remain elusive and insecure. The essay is in two parts. The first half discusses the metaphors implicit in the names given to the region, the South Seas, the Pacific and Oceania, and relates their imagining in the early European expeditions of Balboa and Magellan, in Hodges' paintings done on Cook's second voyage in the 18th century, and in conceptualizations of Australian identity from the colonial period to the mid-20th century writing of historians such as Hancock, Barnard and Manning Clark. The second half of the essay traces the repetition of the same metaphors in the theories of de Certeau and Baudrillard, and in the writings of contemporary Australian critics, including McKenzie Wark, Ross Gibson and Paul Carter.
TL;DR: The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) as discussed by the authors is the most advanced proposal in the construction of a theoretical and practical world alternative, synthesizing western beliefs and ideas with those characteristic of the long struggles of resistance by the poor, discriminated and excluded of the earth.
Abstract: Mexico's southeastern Maya movement offers one of the most advanced proposals in the construction of a theoretical and practical world alternative. It comes from the rain forest people's deepest convictions, simultaneously synthesizing western beliefs and ideas with those characteristic of the long struggles of resistance by the poor, discriminated and excluded of the earth. The many voices that spoke out at the Intercontinental Meeting for Humanity and against Neoliberalism, held in Chiapas from 27 July to 3 August 1996, reinforced the Zapatista Army of National Liberation's (EZLN) blueprint for universal democracy with justice, freedom, pluralism and dignity for all human beings, and joined in the emergence of a new way of thinking, feeling and acting. The originality of the theory of the Rain Forest is to be found in linking utopia, as a construct of the possible based on reality, with the construction of power derived from civil society. It is also a creative and historic movement that responds to the...
TL;DR: The use of risk as resource and the systematic randomness of these new operational trends have perverse implications not only for the integrity of political systems but also for the neoliberal promoters and players inside the new complex system of global finance as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Critical analyses of international financial markets tend to explain changes over recent decades in terms of a resurgent liberalism. This paper employs a systems theoretical approach to argue that there has been a far more fundamental transformation in the operations of these financial markets than simply a shift towards more liberalized regimes of regulation. The use of risk as resource and the systematic randomness of these new operational trends have perverse implications not only for the integrity of political systems but also for the neoliberal promoters and players inside the new complex system of global finance.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse the post-war trajectories of antipodean economies in the context of the reconstruction of the world market under US hegemony after the end of the Second World War.
Abstract: Since the end of the Second World War, the Australasian economies have fared poorly relative both to the high-income states of western Europe and North America and to the `miracle' economies strung along the Pacific coasts of Asia. This article attempts to analyze the post-war trajectories of antipodean economies in the context of the reconstruction of the world market under US hegemony after the end of the Second World War. The first section traces the rise of Japan and the emergence of Pacific Asia as a consolidated nexus of densely interwoven patterns of relational networks. The second section examines how ongoing processes of capitalist restructuring undermined the Asian miracle economies. Finally, the last section seeks to analyze the causes for the disproportionately adverse impact that processes of worldwide transformation have had for the two antipodean settler states.
TL;DR: The most powerful and least sentimental philosophy of the modern age has owed its bite to an intimate familiarity with the classical Mediterranean world as discussed by the authors, which was neither crusty nor reactionary nor pined for a golden age in the past.
Abstract: [Extract] Some of the most powerful and least sentimental philosophy of the modern age has owed its bite to an intimate familiarity with the classical Mediterranean world. Nietzsche's tragic agon, Lukacs' epic totality and, Arendt's vita activa were signature ideas of a cast of brilliant minds, who - unlike liberal thinkers from Mill to Hayek to Ferry - kept their distance from the demoralizing and despritualizing drive of modernity, and yet did so in a was that was neither crusty nor reactionary nor pined for a golden age in the past. On the contrary, even paradoxically, there is an emphatically modern current that runs through their thinking. Less modern perhaps than Emile Durkheim for whom the autopoetic 'moralities' of differentiated professions seemed an adequate consolation for the deracination of life by contractual and utilitarian imperatives; but more modern than the other great 'founder' of social thought - Max Weber - who, while defending the 'realism' of the Durkheimian view that the best we have are strong professional moralities (vocations) and accepting the correlate of this (the polytheism of 'value' systems in the modern world) - seemed also to dream of a lost order in which geoscopic religious ethics held firm against the functional bureaucratic imperatives that dominate modern life. Somehow, for Weber, the choice of vocation was, in the end, not enough. He yearned for something more; at least this is what his meticulous investigations of Confucian, Buddhist, and Hindu ethics suggest.
TL;DR: The thought of Heidegger and Bataille has rarely been placed in proximity as mentioned in this paper, and the notion of the ''ecstatic'' unconsciously draws them together. But this must be tempered by the recognition that the situation is immensely complex, and that there is always a risk of political regression in every essentialist orientation.
Abstract: The thought of Heidegger and Bataille has rarely been placed in proximity. However, the notion of the `ecstatic' unconsciously draws them together. Its fundamental ramifications in each thinker's oeuvre should prompt serious reflection, particularly in the age of calculation and cybernetics. The non-utilitarian aspects of the gift, exchange, sacrifice and the sacred also bring the two thinkers closer to each other in a challenge to the dominance of what Bataille calls the `restricted economy' of balanced accounts and equilibrium at all costs. To allow the thought of Heidegger and Bataille to communicate is to demarcate a point of resistance to an uncritical acceptance of the postmodern age. However, this must be tempered by the recognition that the situation is immensely complex, and that there is always a risk of political regression in every essentialist orientation - as the example of Heidegger shows.
TL;DR: In this paper, the moral capacities of civil societies and their ability to inspire altruistic actions are emphasized, and the authors suggest that social actors can reconfigure societal self-understandings through moral interventions in the public sphere and that such refigurations of the symbolic order are central for democratic transition.
Abstract: This article offers a new interpretation of Mexico's transition to democracy that differs from the pessimistic and less culturally oriented ones that currently prevail. In the article I develop a normative model, which emphasizes the moral capacities of civil societies and their ability to inspire altruistic actions. I suggest that this approach is not only more compelling philosophically but also more plausible empirically. To demonstrate this, I reconstruct a series of events from Mexico's recent past. My discussion suggests that social actors can reconfigure societal self-understandings through moral interventions in the public sphere and that such refigurations of the symbolic order are central for democratic transition.
TL;DR: The authors reviewed the basic structural features of the Australian middle class during most of the 20th century, and suggested that a number of the arrangements which had delivered high status, material privileges and security to the group are becoming increasingly problematic.
Abstract: In what directions is the Australian `new' middle class developing as we move towards the `Asia-Pacific century'? This paper reviews the basic structural features of the group during most of the 20th century, and suggests that a number of the arrangements which had delivered high status, material privileges and security to the group are becoming increasingly problematic. It examines evidence of the growing importance of Asian opportunities to the Australian middle class, and indications of responses to these. Interpreted in the context of contemporary accounts of transformations in identity formation processes, this evidence may signal the emergence of a significant new stratum within the Australian middle class. The paper concludes with some speculations about the significance of such a development.