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The New Spirit of Capitalism

01 Jan 2005-
TL;DR: A century after the publication of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, a major new work examines network-based organization, employee autonomy and post-Fordist horizontal work structures.
Abstract: A century after the publication of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, a major new work examines network-based organization, employee autonomy and post-Fordist horizontal work structures.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a series of critical reflections on the need to "insert" career guidance in the European discourse on "flexicurity" have been made, highlighting the fact that any consideration of flexicure arrangements needs to be empirically grounded in time and space, and carefully contextualised.
Abstract: This article sets out to trigger research and policy attention among the career guidance community to the increasingly important notion of ‘flexicurity’. It first explores the different meanings of the term, particularly as these have evolved in discussions across the European Union. It then goes on to consider why ‘flexicurity’ has attracted so much policy interest, particularly in its promise to both support labour market competitiveness and increase economic efficiency on the one hand, while protecting the interests of workers on the other. Next, the article documents some of the key debates around the notion of flexicurity, highlighting the fact that any consideration of ‘flexicure’ arrangements needs to be empirically grounded in time and space, and carefully contextualised. The article concludes by making a series of critical reflections on the need to ‘insert’ career guidance in the European discourse on ‘flexicurity’.

18 citations

Dissertation
28 Mar 2017
TL;DR: Derksen et al. as discussed by the authors argue that the assumption of more abstraction is prevalent but never adequately explained, probably because abstraction, by its very nature, is not quantifiable; if it were, it would hardly be abstract.
Abstract: ion | Value It is easy to equate the idea of capitalist abstractions with the vast, unseeable global networks of late capitalism and the opaque transactions of finance capital that arose in the long 1980s. But capitalism has always depended on abstraction. First and foremost, it has depended on abstract labour, which emerges from the dual character of labour under capitalism, in the process whereby concrete labour appears as qualitatively different use-values, and abstract labour appears as the value-form. The understandable sense, especially prevalent in rich countries, that capitalist life is more abstract than it was in, say, the 1960s, is difficult to substantiate, since as Leigh Claire La Berge puts it, “the assumption of more abstraction is prevalent but never adequately explained, probably because abstraction, by its very nature, is not quantifiable; if it were, it would hardly be abstract.” What is more, the prominence of the idea of capitalist abstractions as a certain type of inscrutable, recently-arrived set of planetary forces (abstractions that, of course, nevertheless exert incredible force) can deflect from the fact that capitalist abstractions also determine relations at the most intimate, often seemingly concrete, levels: in the social atomization that means one lives in particular familial formations, or that one is separated from their co-worker by an office divider, or that one is denied their Jobseeker’s Allowance this week and goes hungry, to pick three of the most obviously “structural” examples. 27 Jeff Derksen, “A Conversation,” Poets Talk: Conversations with Robert Kroetsch, Daphne Marlatt, Erín Mouré, Dionne Brand, Marie Annharte Baker, Jeff Derksen and Fred Wah (Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press, 2005), 130-1. See also, Derksen’s writing on an urban poetics of the global, an aesthetic practice in which “a cataloguing of forces, effects and practices which, when arrested, can be arranged into a form which gives materiality and denseness to these forces.” After Euphoria (Zürich: JRP Ringier, 2015), 81. 28 Leigh Claire La Berge, Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s (Oxford University Press, 2015), 15.

17 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an empirical analysis of Wikiwashing, a strategy of corporate infrastructure providers where practices associated to their role of profit seeking corporations (such as abusive terms of use, privacy violation, censorship, and use of voluntary work for profit purposes, among others) that would be seen as unethical by the communities they enable are concealed by promoting a misleading image of themselves associated with the general values of wikis and Wikipedia, such as sharing and collaboration, openness and transparency.
Abstract: In order for online communities to assemble and grow, some basic infrastructure is necessary that makes possible the aggregation of the collective action. There is a very intimate and complex relationship between the technological infrastructure and the social character of the community which uses it. Today, most infrastructure is provided by corporations and the contrast between community and corporate dynamics is becoming increasingly pronounced. But rather than address the issues, the corporations are actively obfuscating it. Wikiwashing refers to a strategy of corporate infrastructure providers where practices associated to their role of profit seeking corporations (such as abusive terms of use, privacy violation, censorship, and use of voluntary work for profit purposes, among others) that would be seen as unethical by the communities they enable are concealed by promoting a misleading image of themselves associated with the general values of wikis and Wikipedia (such as sharing and collaboration, openness and transparency). The empirical analysis is based on case studies (Facebook, Yahoo! and Google) and triangulation of several methods.

17 citations


Cites background from "The New Spirit of Capitalism"

  • ...From critical theory perspectives, Wikinomics contributes to the concentration of wealth as participants’ activities have a tangible value for the providers (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005; Fuchs, 2008; MoulierBoutang, 2007)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, references to the future in a corpus of CSR (corporate social responsibility) reports are examined. And a case study of markers of futurity is presented, focusing on ways of expressing prediction or commitment, together with attitudinal values or evaluations of importance.
Abstract: Company disclosures are often looked at as narrative rather than argumentative or directive texts. And yet “irrealis” statements – references to future or hypothetical processes – do play a role and contribute greatly to the construction of corporate identity. Combining a corpus and a discourse perspective, the paper looks at references to the future in a corpus of CSR (corporate social responsibility) reports. After a preliminary analysis of frequency data, a case study of markers of futurity is presented, focusing on ways of expressing prediction or commitment, together with attitudinal values or evaluations of importance. Keywords and phraseology are studied to highlight how prediction and commitment statements are used to legitimize the company’s (past) conduct.

17 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a translation of the poem "The Pleasures of Philosophy" is presented, with a discussion of concrete rules and abstract machines in the context of art and philosophy.
Abstract: Translator's Foreword: Pleasures of Philosophy Notes on the Translation and Acknowledgements Author's Note 1. Introduction: Rhizome 2. 1914: One or Several Wolves? 3. 10,000 BC: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?) 4. November 20th, 1923: Postulates of Linguistics 5. 587BC-AD70: On Several Regimes of Signs 6. November 28th, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs? 7. Year Zero: Faciality 8. 1874: Three Novellas, or "What Happened?" 9. 1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity 10. 1730: Becoming Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming Imperceptible... 11. 1837: Of the Refrain 12. 1227: Treatise on Nomadology - The War Machine 13. 7000BC: Apparatus of Capture 14. 1440: The Smooth and the Striated 15. Conclusion: Concrete Rules and Abstract Machines Notes Bibliography List of Illustrations Index

14,735 citations

Posted Content
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: The 2008 crash has left all the established economic doctrines - equilibrium models, real business cycles, disequilibria models - in disarray as discussed by the authors, and a good viewpoint to take bearings anew lies in comparing the post-Great Depression institutions with those emerging from Thatcher and Reagan's economic policies: deregulation, exogenous vs. endoge- nous money, shadow banking vs. Volcker's Rule.
Abstract: The 2008 crash has left all the established economic doctrines - equilibrium models, real business cycles, disequilibria models - in disarray. Part of the problem is due to Smith’s "veil of ignorance": individuals unknowingly pursue society’s interest and, as a result, have no clue as to the macroeconomic effects of their actions: witness the Keynes and Leontief multipliers, the concept of value added, fiat money, Engel’s law and technical progress, to name but a few of the macrofoundations of microeconomics. A good viewpoint to take bearings anew lies in comparing the post-Great Depression institutions with those emerging from Thatcher and Reagan’s economic policies: deregulation, exogenous vs. endoge- nous money, shadow banking vs. Volcker’s Rule. Very simply, the banks, whose lending determined deposits after Roosevelt, and were a public service became private enterprises whose deposits determine lending. These underlay the great moderation preceding 2006, and the subsequent crash.

3,447 citations

Book
01 Jan 1967
TL;DR: The Society of the Spectacle as mentioned in this paper is one of the most influential theoretical works for a wide range of political and revolutionary practice in the 1960s, and it has been widely used in the literature since.
Abstract: For the first time, Guy Debord's pivotal work Society of the Spectacle appears in a definitive and authoritative English translation. Originally published in France in 1967, Society of the Spectacle offered a set of radically new propositions about the nature of contemporary capitalism and modern culture. At the same time it was one of the most influential theoretical works for a wide range of political and revolutionary practice in the 1960s. Today, Debord's work continues to be in the forefront of debates about the fate of consumer society and the operation of modern social power. In a sweeping revision of Marxist categories, the notion of the spectacle takes the problem of the commodity from the sphere of economics to a point at which the commodity as an image dominates not only economic exchange but the primary communicative and symbolic activity of all modern societies.Guy Debord was one of the most important participants in the activities associated with the Situationist International in the 1960s. Also an artist and filmmaker, he is the author of Memoires and Commentaires sur la societe du spectacle. A Swerve Edition, distributed for Zone Books.

3,391 citations

Book
01 Mar 1987
TL;DR: Relevance Lost as mentioned in this paper is an overview of the evolution of management accounting in American business, from textile mills in the 1880s and the giant railroad, steel, and retail corporations, to today's environment of global competition and computer-automated manufacturers.
Abstract: "Relevance Lost" is an overview of the evolution of management accounting in American business, from textile mills in the 1880s and the giant railroad, steel, and retail corporations, to today's environment of global competition and computer-automated manufacturers. The book shows that modern corporations must work toward designing new management accounting systems that will assist managers more fully in their long-term planning. It is the winner of the American Accounting Association's Deloitte Haskins & Sells/Wildman Award Medal. It is also available in paperback: ISBN 0875842542.

3,308 citations