Architecture and the Culture-Ideology of Consumerism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Sklair
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
Ecological Stress ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Contemporary Architecture

This chapter sets out to explore the theoretical and substantive connections between iconicity and consumerism in the field of contemporary architecture and urban design. The culture-ideology of consumerism refers to a set of beliefs and values, integral to the system of global capitalism, intended to make people believe that human worth is best created and hap­piness best achieved in terms of consumption and possessions. Although she uses different terms, Juliet Schor (1993) expresses very well the view of consumerism on which my argument rests. While I share her emphasis on producerism, I would explain it as a direct consequence of how the major transnational corporations operate. My argument in what follows assumes that capitalist globalization and consumerism are unsustainable in the long run, due to the crises of class polarization and ecological stress they engender (Sklair 2002: 48–57). Not all culture is ideological, even in capitalist societies. Consumerism in the capitalist global system can only be fully understood as culture-ideology, where cultural practices (embedded in socio-economic institutions) reinforce the ideology of capitalist consumerism and the ideology (embedded in common sense beliefs) reinforces the cultural practices. The brand-stretching campaign of the locally iconic Boston Public Library in 2004 (figure 7.1) embellished by the slogan ‘Books Are Just the Beginning’ is a telling example of the links between architecture and consumerism in practice. Libraries are not exempt. This is a first indication of how the Icon Project in architecture operates at the local level. More or less all space is potentially consumerist space, but there is certainly a continuum from maximally consumerist space, in which users are provided with many opportunities to spend money and few opportunities not to (e.g., shopping malls) to minimally consumerist space, in which there are very few if any opportunities to spend money (e.g., cemeteries; the families have already spent the money and for others this may only be a matter of time).

Multivariate Markov-switching score-driven models: an application to the global crude oil market

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Szabolcs Blazsek ◽  
Alvaro Escribano ◽  
Adrian Licht
Keyword(s):  
Crude Oil ◽  
Moving Average ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Markov Switching ◽  
Impulse Response Functions ◽  
Common Trends ◽  
Vector Autoregressive ◽  
Oil Market ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Special Cases

Abstract A new class of multivariate nonlinear quasi-vector autoregressive (QVAR) models is introduced. It is a Markov switching score-driven model with stochastic seasonality for the multivariate t-distribution (MS-Seasonal-t-QVAR). As an extension, we allow for the possibility of having common-trends and nonlinear co-integration. Score-driven nonlinear updates of local level and seasonality are used, which are robust to outliers within each regime. We show that VAR integrated moving average (VARIMA) type filters are special cases of QVAR filters. Using exclusion, sign, and elasticity identification restrictions in MS-Seasonal-t-QVAR with common-trends, we provide short-run and long-run impulse response functions for the global crude oil market.

Reducing the Impact of Unemployment through Work-Sharing: Some Industrial Relations Considerations

1983 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noah M. Meltz ◽  
Frank Reid
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
National Level ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Work Sharing ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Short Run ◽  
The Impact

The Canadian Government has introduced a work-sharing program in which lay offs are avoided by reducing the work week and using unemployment insurance funds to pay workers short-time compensation. Compared to the lay-off alternative, there appear to be economic benefits to work-sharing for both management and employees. Reaction to the scheme has been generally positive at the union local level and the firm level, but it has been negative at the national level of both labour and management. These divergent views can be explained mainly as a result of short-run versus long-run perspectives. Managers at the firm level see the immediate benefit of improved labour relations and the avoidance of the costs of hiring and training replacements for laid-off workers who do not respond when recalled. The national business leaders are more concerned with work incentive and efficiency aspects of work-sharing.

Intimate Transgressions and Communalist Narratives: Inter-religious romance in a divided Gujarat

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1277-1297 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLYN HEITMEYER
Keyword(s):  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Public Knowledge ◽  
Arranged Marriage ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
Significant Challenge ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Media Reports

AbstractIn this article, I examine the seeming paradox of Hindu–Muslim romantic affairs in the wider context of communalism in Gujarat in the wake of the 2002 anti-Muslim violence. At the outset, such affairs appear to embody the most extreme form of taboo, both in their defiance of conventional arranged marriage systems (where caste endogamy and shared religious affiliation play a paramount role) as well as in the wider socio-political context in which Hindus and Muslims are viewed as irreconcilable enemies, or at least oppositional in lifestyle, beliefs, and values. Yet, while media reports in recent years have highlighted similar cases of transgressive liaisons elsewhere in India which have been met with extreme violence, the couplings which I describe in this article, are in practice tolerated by kin and neighbours as an ‘open secret’ which, while public knowledge, has not incurred strong retribution. While love has often been presented as a force for emancipation from the constraints of social conventions and norms in the popular media, I argue that this ‘toleration’ of inter-religious liaisons in the cases I describe suggests the very opposite: namely, that they do not present a significant challenge to entrenched social divisions at the local level.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 214-240
Author(s):  
Krista A. Goff
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Nikita Khrushchev ◽  
The People ◽  
Policies And Practices

This chapter recovers a historical experience of how Soviet nationality policies and practices promoted and erased the memory of a dynamic, interwoven experience of community building, rebuilding, trauma, erasure, and activism among people in the hopes of creating a communist world. It traces the people on the local level who actively participated in bringing several communist events about. It also assesses today's post-Soviet world as a direct consequence of experiences and how they were processed. The chapter looks at the 1962 petition that asked Nikita Khrushchev why the greater community could not love the Georgian-Ingilo language and culture. It addresses the issue of who belonged in the Soviet republics, who belonged in the Soviet future, and who had the power to determine that belonging.

Sustainable Forest Use and India's Economic Growth

2016 ◽  
pp. 306-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayita Bit ◽  
Sarmila Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Sustainable Forest Management ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Ecological Stress ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Forest Coverage ◽  
Import And Export ◽  
Forest Use ◽  
The Government ◽  
Sustainable Forest Use

This paper assesses the prospect of sustainable forest management (SFM) for an emerging economy like India, where forest coverage has gone up over the last three decades in spite of population growth, rapid urbanization and fast economic growth. To assess the possibility of sustainable future growth in a globally congenial environment, the extent of ecological stress on Indian economy has been assessed by using Input-Output transaction tables and pattern of expenditure by the Government and the Private sector along with Import and Export of forestry and related products over 1993-94 to 2007-08. The change in direct forest intensity (DFI) in gross domestic product has been calculated and decomposed into effects due to material intensity, structural change and economic growth. The results reveal increasing dominance of economic growth over other effects indicating necessity of designing intervention to decouple potential future economic growth from forest resources to ensure long run sustainability.

scholarly journals Practice and Innovations of Inclusive Education at School

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 176
Author(s):  
Larysa V. Kozibroda ◽  
Oksana P. Kruhlyk ◽  
Larysa S. Zhuravlova ◽  
Svitlana V. Chupakhina ◽  
Оlena M. Verzhihovska
Keyword(s):  
Inclusive Education ◽  
Parental Support ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Teachers Beliefs ◽  
Severity Of Disability ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes

The article has carried out a meta-analysis of the research concerning practice and innovations of inclusive education at school. Investigation of the practice of inclusive education at schools has been intensified since the 1990s, after identifying the need to implement inclusion strategies and concepts at the international level. The first studies of inclusive education (until the 2000s) concerned beliefs and values as a factor, influencing the effectiveness of inclusion, strategies of inclusive education. Investigations after the 2000s have been aimed at more focused subject matter of the research at the local level in different countries: principals’ beliefs, teachers’ self-efficacy, the role of parental support, school ideology, models of inclusion at private schools, the severity of disability as a factor determining teachers’ beliefs concerning inclusion. Various inclusive models have been formed as a practice result of implementing inclusion. Two key effective approaches to integration of inclusion have been highlighted: integrated and differentiated. An integrated approach involves the introduction of innovations in inclusive education in the following elements of the educational system, namely: the concept (strategy) that defines the model, external preconditions and stages of inclusion; a school that defines the internal prerequisites for inclusion; a community. A differentiated approach is used in combination with theintegrated one in order to identify the internal prerequisites for inclusion: values, beliefs and attitudes of teachers, the competence of educators.

The long run industrial growth of Veracruz state, 1955-2008

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 821-832
Author(s):  
Gregory J. Brock
Keyword(s):  
Technical Efficiency ◽  
Production Function ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Regional Growth ◽  
Efficiency Index ◽  
Industrial Growth ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Industrial Labor

Purpose – Has the Mexican inter-regional growth and convergence experience also occurred within single regions? Using the important southern region of Veracruz, the purpose of this paper is to examine this question over a 48-year period within a single Mexican state. Design/methodology/approach – Growth is examined using a standard two input stochastic production function (SPF) that creates a measure of technical efficiency. Convergence is measured using a convergence equation from the literature but which also included the results from the SPF analysis to incorporate not only initial levels of inputs but also the ability of a municipio to utilize these inputs. Data collection in Mexico and online included a long run database of 149 municipios in Veracruz from 1960 thru 2008. Findings – A stochastic Cobb-Douglas technology is found to fit the long run growth of Veracruz province well. In the 1960s, 2000s and the long run (1960-2008), weak evidence for the municipios in Veracruz appear to be converging with a relatively higher level of technical efficiency resulting in slower growth of industrial labor productivity is found. Some very recent improvement in technical efficiency may be the result of institutional as well as economic reforms finally allowing an exiting of inefficient firms that has kept the levels of municipio industrial technical efficiency stagnant for decades at about 70 percent. Research limitations/implications – Data were limited to 149 municipios because of the need to track long run trends. Data were also limited by the need to use what was available in 1960 in a direct comparison with 2008. The design of the study was to use the technical efficiency index as a proxy for much of the missing data on institutions in the historic period. Panel data were used because the economic census is not done every year plus the turmoil in the Mexican economy in the 1980s thru the end of the 1990s make imputation of missing years at the local level quite difficult. Practical implications – The paper provides a baseline to analyze the long run intra-regional economic growth of other Mexican states which have a large number of municipios. It begins the exciting possibility of looking at Mexican long run growth from the municipio level which has historically played an important role in Mexico. Originality/value – This is the first study to examine long run growth within a Mexican state at the municipio level using both the production function and convergence literature. Results suggest several avenues for further research inside Veracruz and across Mexico.

scholarly journals Determinants of Inflation in the Local Economy

ETIKONOMI ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Jaka Sriyana
Keyword(s):  
Exchange Rate ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Inflation Rate ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Price Change ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Price Changes ◽  
Vector Error Correction ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Short Run

This research analyzes the determinants of inflation rate in the local economy. It uses co-integration and vector error correction to capture the long and short run relationship between inflation rate and other economic variables. We find that the determinants of inflation rate in Yogyakarta are minimum wage, economic growth, and monetary variables indicated by BI-rate.  More finding, exchange rate also contributes to the price change. This research finds evidence of long-run causality between minimum wage and inflation and unidirectional relationship from wage to inflation in the short run. This finding confirms the proposition of non-neutrality wage on price changes. The inflation rate in the local economy depends not only on the regional indicator but also depends on international changes reflected in the exchange rate. Monetary variable indicated by BI- rate also partially contributes to the price changes at the local level. Overall, the local government has successfully managed the price changes.DOI: 10.15408/etk.v17i1.7146

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