The First Precariat?

2017 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 99-108
Author(s):  
Leon Fink
Keyword(s):  
Marked Effect ◽  
Mirror Effect ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Global Crisis ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Given

The transformation of global capitalism, labor, and class relations in our own day is having a marked effect on how we study those subjects historically. Yet, as happens repeatedly in our historical discipline, insights gained from the juxtaposition and recognition of deep structural affinities between the present and the past also carry the risk of a distorted mirror effect. What questions we carry to the past and what lessons we, in turn, extract from it must be handled with care. As couriers between worlds of time as well as space, our work as historians inevitably reflects the ignorance as well as intelligence attending the message (as well as the messenger) of the given moment. With these caveats in mind, I want to explore the link between today's global crisis in worker welfare—perhaps most commonly summoned up by the twinned terms “neoliberalism” and the “precariat”—and a new historical preoccupation with coerced laborers of the past. With due deference to the aims of this collection, I will concentrate on the connection between the coolie question, as it developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the plight (and possible strategies) of low-wage global workers today.

Acquiring penmanship and writing skills from the first to fifth grade of primary school: Joined-up writing vs. Comenia Script

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Olga Kučerová ◽  
Anna Kucharská
Keyword(s):  
Primary School ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Fifth Grade ◽  
Point Scale ◽  
The Past ◽  
School Year ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Developmental Dynamics ◽  
The Given

Abstract The project presented here deals with a typical human means of communication – writing. The aim of the project is to map the developmental dynamics of handwriting from the first to the fifth grade of primary school. The question remains topical because of the fact that several systems of writing have been used in the past few years. Our project focuses on comparing the systems of joined-up handwriting (the standard Latin alphabet) and the most widespread form of printed handwriting: Comenia Script. The research can be marked as sectional; pupils took a writing exam at the beginning and at the end of the 2015/2016 school year. The total number of respondents was 624 pupils, evenly distributed according to the school year, system of writing and gender. To evaluate handwriting, the evaluation scale of Veverková and Kucharská (2012) was adjusted to include a description of phenomena related to graphomotor and grammatical aspects of writing, including the overall error rate and work with errors. Each area that was observed included a series of indicators through which it was possible to create a comprehensive image of the form handwriting took in the given period. Each indicator was independently classified on a three-point scale. Thanks to that, a comprehensive image of the form of writing of a contemporary pupil emerged.

Mapping Logistical Capitalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 026327642199042
Author(s):  
Eugene Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Class Composition

This review article engages with a rich field of scholarship on logistics that has gathered momentum over the past decade, focusing on two new publications by Laleh Khalili and Martín Arboleda. It contextualizes how and why logistics is bound up with the militarization of contemporary political and social life. I argue that the later 20th century rise of logistics can be better understood as both a response to and symptom of capitalist crisis and I situate this scholarship on war and logistics in relationship to Giovanni Arrighi’s account of crisis and ‘unravelling hegemony’. I also show how logistics provides essential critical and visual resources that contribute to efforts to map global capitalism and to debates on totality and class composition in contemporary critical theory. Finally, contemporary events such as the ongoing Coronavirus crisis and the reemergence of Black Lives Matter are considered in light of this analysis with reference to the centrality of logistics to racial capitalism.

scholarly journals Optimising the AR Engraved Structure on Light-Guide Facets for a Wide Range of Wavelengths

Optics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-42
Author(s):  
Ioseph Gurwich ◽  
Yakov Greenberg ◽  
Kobi Harush ◽  
Yarden Tzabari
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Analysis ◽  
Light Guide ◽  
Spectral Band ◽  
Angular Range ◽  
The Past ◽  
Input And Output ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Given ◽  
Theoretical Results ◽  
Shape And Size

The present study is aimed at designing anti-reflective (AR) engraving on the input–output surfaces of a rectangular light-guide. We estimate AR efficiency, by the transmittance level in the angular range, determined by the light-guide. Using nano-engraving, we achieve a uniform high transmission over a wide range of wavelengths. In the past, we used smoothed conical pins or indentations on the faces of light-guide crystal as the engraved structure. Here, we widen the class of pins under consideration, following the physical model developed in the previous paper. We analyze the smoothed pyramidal pins with different base shapes. The possible effect of randomization of the pins parameters is also examined. The results obtained demonstrate optimized engraved structure with parameters depending on the required spectral range and facet format. The predicted level of transmittance is close to 99%, and its flatness (estimated by the standard deviation) in the required wavelengths range is 0.2%. The theoretical analysis and numerical calculations indicate that the obtained results demonstrate the best transmission (reflection) we can expect for a facet with the given shape and size for the required spectral band. The approach is equally useful for any other form and of the facet. We also discuss a simple way of comparing experimental and theoretical results for a light-guide with the designed input and output features. In this study, as well as in our previous work, we restrict ourselves to rectangular facets. We also consider the limitations on maximal transmission produced by the size and shape of the light-guide facets. The theoretical analysis is performed for an infinite structure and serves as an upper bound on the transmittance for smaller-size apertures.

scholarly journals A note on some further determinations of the dielectric constants of organic bodies and electrolytes at very low temperatures

1898 ◽  
Vol 62 (379-387) ◽  
pp. 250-266 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Dielectric Constant ◽  
Low Temperatures ◽  
Tuning Fork ◽  
Dielectric Constants ◽  
The Past ◽  
Method Of Measurement ◽  
The Given ◽  
Past Summer

In several previous communications we have described the investigations made by us on the dielectric constants of various frozen organic bodies and electrolytes at very low temperatures. In these researches we employed a method for the measurement of the dielectric constant which consisted in charging and discharging a condenser, having the given body as dielectric, through a galvanometer 120 times in a second by means of a tuning-fork interrupter. During the past summer we have repeated some of these determinations and used a different method of measurement and a rather higher frequency. In the experiments here described we have adopted Nernst’s method for the measurement of dielectric constants, using for this purpose the apparatus as arranged by Dr. Nernst which belongs to the Davy-Faraday Laboratory.

Development of Advanced CNC Interpolation Algorithm With Consideration of Command and Dynamic Errors

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meng-Shiun Tsai ◽  
Ying-Che Huang
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Contour Error ◽  
Interpolation Algorithm ◽  
Interpolation Scheme ◽  
Error Equation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cnc Interpolation ◽  
Dynamic Errors ◽  
Simulation Results ◽  
The Given

In this paper, an integrated acceleration/deceleration with dynamics interpolation scheme is proposed to confine the maximum contour error at the junction of linear junction. The dynamic contour error equation is derived analytically and then it is utilized for the interpolation design. Based on the derived formulations which could predict the command and dynamic errors, the advanced interpolation design could adjust the connecting velocity of the two blocks to confine the overall contour errors under the given tolerance. Simulation results validate the proposed algorithm can achieve higher accurate trajectory as compared to the other interpolation algorithm proposed in the past.

scholarly journals Three Decades After. Advancing Capitalism and the (Re)Production of Romania’s Semi-Peripherality

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-164
Author(s):  
Enikő Vincze
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Uneven Development ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Eastern Enlargement ◽  
Symbolic Function ◽  
The Past ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
The Eu ◽  
New Millennium

Abstract The article elaborates upon the production of Romania’s semi-peripherality at the intersection of long-durée dependency, uneven development, Eastern enlargement, and imperial politics, while addressing the advancement of capitalism not as a purely economic endeavour, but as a process of political subjection. It discusses the particular status of Romania in contemporary global capitalism by analysing the broader context of (1) a semi-periphery country subjected to a long-durée dependency; (2) uneven development underlay by imperial politics as endemic feature of the neoliberal European Union; (3) ‘Eastern enlargement’ and its economic conditionalities; (4) unevenness in the EU in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. As its conclusion, the article notes that in the past three decades, each of these components had a productive (material or symbolic) function in the reproduction of Romanian’s semi-peripherality as part of capitalism’s advancement in the new Millennium.

scholarly journals Advertising Homeownership through Cultural Capitalism: Neoliberal Making of New Shanghai Middle-Class Dream

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Lei Ping
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Interior Design ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Urban Citizenship ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cosmopolitan Citizenship ◽  
Market Promotion ◽  
Class Distinction

Private homeownership has increasingly become a kind of new obsession and a symbol of upward mobility among the emerging middle class in post-Mao Chinese society. This essay studies the neoliberal making of the new Shanghai middle-class dream by exploring how this dream is invented and imagined through the pursuit of cosmopolitan citizenship, socio-spatial class distinction, and tiered lifestyles. It analyzes and problematizes the enduring charm of Shanghai as a global “city of magic” continues to attract those who aspire to eventually own a piece of property and display cultural capital of this highly unaffordable neoliberal city. Through a series of distinct case studies of recent real estate advertisement, interior design philosophy, and signature furniture stores and architecture magazines whose storytelling aesthetics are middle-class-inspired and focused, the essay critiques the way in which private homeownership is engineered, advertised, and made as one of the key prerequisites for the new Shanghainese (xin Shanghairen) to become middle class in the past two decades. It argues that the making of the new Shanghai middle-class dream is problematically preconditioned by a type of state-market promotion and advertisement of private homeownership and urban citizenship that ultimately synchronizes with the state-capitalist, neoliberal making of a moderately prosperous (xiaokang) society where class distinctions have revived to dominate the social, cultural, and economic discourses of a bourgeois Shanghai in the age of global capitalism.

scholarly journals Intolerance across generations: the relation of the Slovak majority to the Jewish minority before, during and after the fall of the communist regime (selected aspects) (in Slovak)

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Past ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Research ◽  
Qualitative Survey ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Majority Population ◽  
The Given

The paper presents the theoretical basis of the issue of existence and application of intolerant attitudes of the majority population in relation to the minority Jewish community in Slovakia. We focus primarily on selected aspects of intolerance against Jews – specifically Slovak nationalism (i.e., political clericalism) and Jewish antisemitism. The starting point of the article is quantitative and qualitative research of Slovaks’ attitudes in the past, in which several experts revealed a negative stereotypical and negative perception of “difference”, which is understood as “not Slovak”, event. not “ours”. We point out that the given attitude extends across generations and across periods (before communism, during it and after communism, i.e. to the present). Subsequently, the text presents the observations that emerged from the survey itself. The aim of the qualitative survey was to describe and analyse the opinions and attitudes of respondents in relation to Jews in Slovakia.

scholarly journals Book reviews: Robert Guest (2004) “The Shackled Continent: Power, Corruption, and African Lives”

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Tadele Zemede Wubayehu
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Tribal Politics

Over the past two decades, extreme poverty has been decreasing in all regions of the world except for sub-Saharan Africa. This attracted the attention of many scholars and policymakers from Africa and other continents of the world to study and understand the reason why Africa has remained so poor. As a result, many scholars have advanced many reasons for poverty and underdevelopment on the continent.  However, no consensus is reached among scholars for poverty and underdevelopment of Africa. 'The shackled continent' is one of the books that has attempted to explain the reasons why Africa has remained so poor. The main of this paper was to critically review the book. The shackled continent has critically analyzed and identified many hobbles that have affected the development process in Africa.  In this regard, the author assumption is that Africa has remained so poor as a result of several factors which includes failures of leadership, tribal politics, bad governance, impacts of AIDs, resource curse, lack of transparent property rights, ethnic strife, corruption, frequent military coups, and development assistance failures. Guest admits that these reasons to some extent contribute to the Africans' development challenges. However, arguably failures of leadership are the main reason for underdevelopment in Africa. The author argues that global capitalism is merely a solution to Africa's problems. This book has many strengths as well as weaknesses.

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