Starting Principles

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-151
Author(s):  
Phillip Brown
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Economic Welfare ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Capital Assets ◽  
Neoliberal Economics ◽  
Orthodox Theory ◽  
Market Capitalism ◽  
Alternative Understanding

This chapter presents an alternative theory of human capital. It rejects orthodox accounts based on labor scarcity and the idea that people are in a skills competition. With this in mind, the chapter outlines a different approach built on the starting premise that twenty-first-century economies are characterized by job scarcity. It first considers job scarcity and some of its implications for the development of an alternative theory of human capital. The chapter then looks at why translating human behavior into capital is different from other forms of capital assets and why the foundations of individual economic welfare under market capitalism are inherently insecure. Next, an alternative understanding of the self is presented, after which the chapter recognizes the fundamental inequalities in opportunities to develop individual capabilities. Finally, the chapter highlights the socioeconomic foundations of human capital, rejecting the overarching model of neoliberal economics from which orthodox theory derives.

Immanence and Micropolitics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Gilliam
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Conceptual Necessity ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Pure Immanence ◽  
Alternative Understanding

Christian Gilliam argues that a philosophy of ‘pure’ immanence is integral to the development of an alternative understanding of ‘the political’; one that re-orients our understanding of the self toward the concept of an unconscious or ‘micropolitical’ life of desire. He argues that here, in this ‘life’, is where the power relations integral to the continuation of post-industrial capitalism are most present and most at stake. Through proving its philosophical context, lineage and political import, Gilliam ultimately justifies the conceptual necessity of immanence in understanding politics and resistance, thereby challenging the claim that ontologies of ‘pure’ immanence are either apolitical or politically incoherent.

The entrepreneur of the self beyond Foucault’s neoliberal homo oeconomicus

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-511
Author(s):  
Tim Christiaens
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
The Self ◽  
Austrian School ◽  
Homo Oeconomicus ◽  
Austrian School Of Economics ◽  
Joseph Schumpeter

In his lectures on neoliberalism, Michel Foucault argues that neoliberalism produces subjects as ‘entrepreneurs of themselves’. He bases this claim on Gary Becker’s conception of the utility-maximizing agent who solely acts upon cost/benefit-calculations. Not all neoliberalized subjects, however, are encouraged to maximize their utility through mere calculation. This article argues that Foucault’s description of neoliberal subjectivity obscures a non-calculative, more audacious side to neoliberal subjectivity. Precarious workers in the creative industries, for example, are encouraged not merely to rationally manage their human capital, but also to take a leap of faith to acquire unpredictable successes. It is this latter risk-loving, extra-calculative side to neoliberal subjectivity that economists usually designate as ‘entrepreneurial’. By confronting Foucault with the theories of entrepreneurship of the Austrian School of Economics, Frank Knight, and Joseph Schumpeter, the Foucauldian analytical framework is enriched. Neoliberal subjectivation is not the monolithic promotion of utility-maximizing agents, but the generation of a multiplicity of modes for entrepreneurs to relate to oneself and the market.

Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
City Life ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Point Of Departure

What does it mean to be a good citizen today? What are practices of citizenship? And what can we learn from the past about these practices to better engage in city life in the twenty-first century? Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self is a collection of papers that examine these questions. The contributors come from a variety of different disciplines, including architecture, urbanism, philosophy, and history, and their essays make comparative examinations of the practices of citizenship from the ancient world to the present day in both the East and the West. The papers’ comparative approaches, between East and West, and ancient and modern, leads to a greater understanding of the challenges facing citizens in the urbanized twenty-first century, and by looking at past examples, suggests ways of addressing them. While the book’s point of departure is philosophical, its key aim is to examine how philosophy can be applied to everyday life for the betterment of citizens in cities not just in Asia and the West but everywhere.

scholarly journals Mediating Corporeality: Re-Interpretations at the Art/Science Interface

Somatechnics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-304
Author(s):  
Patricia Adams
Keyword(s):  
Digital Imaging ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Adult Stem Cell ◽  
Image Data ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Research Data ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Individual Perspective

Contemporary scientific discoveries are rapidly modifying established concepts of embodiment and corporeality. For example, developing techniques in adult stem cell research can actively remodel the human body; whilst neuroscientists are shedding increasing light on the functioning of our brains. My research at the art/science nexus draws upon recent media theories to investigate the ways twenty-first century constructs of ‘humanness’ and the ‘self’ are affected by both historical and contemporary scientific research and developments in digital imaging technologies. In this article, examples from my artworks: “machina carnis” and “HOST” illustrate how my use of innovative digital technologies and collaborative methodologies has enabled me to immerse myself in the scientific experience at first hand. I demonstrate how my reinterpretations of what is commonly termed ‘hard’ scientific research data does not seek to emulate ‘objective’ readings of the experimental digital image data but rather recontextualises it in the context of my artworks. These artworks acknowledge the personal and visceral content in the scientific data and enable viewer/participants to reflect upon the issues raised from an emotive and individual perspective.

scholarly journals Five Dimensions of Online Persona

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Moore ◽  
Kim Barbour ◽  
Katja Lee
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Five Dimensions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Paradigm ◽  
Online Persona ◽  
Work Done ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Digital Identities

Before Facebook, Twitter, and most of the digital media platforms that now form routine parts of our online lives, Jay Bolter (2000) anticipated that online activities would reshape how we understand and produce identity: a ‘networked self’, he noted, ‘is displacing Cartesian printed self as a cultural paradigm’ (2000, p. 26). The twenty-first century has not only produced a proliferation and mass popularisation of platforms for the production of public digital identities, but also an explosion of scholarship investigating the relationship between such identities and technology. These approaches have mainly focussed on the relations between humans and their networks of other human connections, often neglecting the broader implications of what personas are and might be, and ignoring the rise of the non-human as part of social networks. In this introductory essay, we seek to both trace the work done so far to explore subjectivity and the public presentation of the self via networked technologies, and contribute to these expanding accounts by providing a brief overview of what we consider to be five important dimensions of an online persona. In the following, we identify and explicate the five dimensions of persona as public, mediatised, performative, collective and having intentional value and, while we acknowledge that these dimensions are not exhaustive or complete, they are certainly primary.

Russia Resurrected

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn E. Stoner
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
The United States ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Russian Economy ◽  
Russian State ◽  
The Military

This book refutes the idea that Russia plays a weak hand well in international politics. The book argues instead that Russia under Vladimir Putin’s regime may not be as weak as is sometimes thought in the West. It takes a multidimensional approach in assessing Russian state power in international relations, going beyond metrics of power like relative strength of the economy, human capital, and size of the military, to also include the policy weight or importance of Russian firms and industries, as well as where, geographically, Russian influence has spread globally. The book includes fresh empirical data on the Russian economy, demography and human capital, and conventional military and nuclear weaponry capacities in Russia relative to other great powers like China and the United States. The book argues that realpolitik alone does not explain Russian foreign policy choices under Putin. Rather, Putin’s patronal autocratic regime and the need for social stability play an important role in understanding when and why Russian power is projected in the twenty-first century.

The Divinized Human in the Self-Glorification Hymn from Qumran

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-37
Author(s):  
Peter Schäfer
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Rhetorical Question ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Many

This chapter focuses on the Self-Glorification Hymn from Qumran, which is among the many writings of the community that had withdrawn from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea and dedicated itself to apocalyptic fantasies of the end of days. The Hymn was written in the late Hasmonaean or early Herodian period, which is, the second half of the first century BCE. In it, an unidentified hero boasts that he was elevated among and even above the angels in heaven. The chapter describes the two parallel fragments of the hymn that take the superior, angel-like status of its author yet further. It analyzes the line, “Who is like me among the divine beings?” which is a rhetorical question that evidently means, “Who else is like me among the angels? Is there anyone else who is as elevated as I am among the angels or above them?”

Jewish Law in the Gospels in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls

2021 ◽  
pp. 014610792110343
Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Schiffman
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Right

This study examines a number of specific examples of halakhic (Jewish legal) matters discussed in the New Testament that are also dealt with in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This paper compares and contrasts the rulings of these two traditions, as well as the Pharisaic views, showing that the Jewish legal views of the Gospels are for the most part lenient views to the left of those of the Pharisees, whereas those of the Dead Sea Scrolls represent a stricter view, to the right of the Pharisaic views. Ultimately, in the halakhic debate of the first century ce, the self-understanding of the earliest Christians was very different from that of the sect of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Bangladeshi immigrants’ self-organization and associationism in Venice (Italy)

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-122
Author(s):  
Claudia Mantovan
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Home Country ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Personal Variables ◽  
The Social

In Italy, most of the studies on immigrants’ associationism and participation have concentrated on the more formal andstructured aspects. Little research has been done on forms of immigrant self-organization not oriented towards the society in the country of adoption. Drawing on these considerations, this article analyzes the self-organization of Bangladeshi residents in the municipality of Venice considering both their infra-political and their politico-organizational mobilization, seeking relationships between these two spheres of action, identifying transnational bonds, and dynamics linked to the social and political context of their home country. At the same time, the study considers the influence of other factors, such as the social, political and economic context found in the country of immigration (at both national and local level), and also the personal variables that can influence people’s participation, such as gender, generation, social class, amount of time spent in the adopted country, legal status, formal education, human capital, attitudes and personal projects in general.

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