Forces of Production and Relations of Production

Author(s):  
David Laibman

Marx and Engels based the movement for socialism and communism on a scientific analysis of social evolution rather than on ahistorical moral longings. This, however, requires replacement of vague evocative formulations by rigorous theoretical foundations. Two recent proposals for grounding the theory of the forces and relations of production—“intentional primacy” and “competitive primacy”—provide elements for this project but fail to drive it home. A proposed third approach, “social‒functional primacy,” focuses on the correspondence between advancing human power over nature, on the one hand, and the changing requirements for reproducible systems of exploitation—incentive, coercion, and control—on the other. A core evolutionary ladder of modes of production is identified as the basis for reconstructing the immense complexity of actual history, thus overcoming the dichotomy between “hard” and “soft” approaches to historical materialist theory.

Author(s):  
Andrew Linn ◽  
Anastasiya Bezborodova ◽  
Saida Radjabzade

AbstractThis article presents a practical project to develop a language policy for an English-Medium-Instruction university in Uzbekistan. Although the university is de facto English-only, it presents a complex language ecology, which in turn has led to confusion and disagreement about language use on campus. The project team investigated the experience, views and attitudes of over a thousand people, including faculty, students, administrative and maintenance staff, in order to arrive at a proposed policy which would serve the whole community, based on the principle of tolerance and pragmatism. After outlining the relevant language and educational context and setting out the methods and approach of the underpinning research project, the article goes on to present the key findings. One of the striking findings was an appetite for control and regulation of language behaviours. Language policies in Higher Education invariably fall down at the implementation stage because of a lack of will to follow through on their principles and their specific guidelines. Language policy in international business on the other hand is characterised by a control stage invariably lacking in language planning in education. Uzbekistan is a polity used to control measures following from policy implementation. The article concludes by suggesting that Higher Education in Central Asia may stand a better chance of seeing through language policies around English-Medium Instruction than, for example, in northern Europe, based on the tension between tolerance on the one hand and control on the other.


2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Mubi Brighenti

In this article I review a series of artworks, artistic performances and installations that deal with the topic of surveillance. My aim is twofold. On the one hand, I want to look comparatively at how different artists interrogate, question, quote, or critise surveillance society. On the other hand, I take these artistic actions as themselves symptomatic of the ways in which surveillance interrogates contemporary society. In other words, my claim is that surveillance does not simply produce substantive social control and social triage, it also contributes to the formation of an ideoscape and a collective imagery about what security, insecurity, and control are ultimately about, as well as the landscape of moods a surveillance society like ours expresses.


The barometer, here alluded to, may in some measure be consi­dered as two separate and independent barometers, inasmuch as it is formed of two distinct tubes dipping into one and the same cistern of mercury. One of these tubes is made of flint glass, and the other of crown glass, with a view to ascertain whether, at the end of any given period, the one may have had any greater chemical effect on the mercury than the other, and thus affected the results. A brass rod, to which the scale is attached, passes through the framework, between the two tubes, and is thus common to both : one end of which is furnished with a fine agate point, which, by means of a rack and pinion moving the whole rod, may be brought just to touch the surface of the mercury in the cistern, the slightest contact with which is immediately discernible; and the other end of which bears the usual scale of inches, tenths, &c.; and there is a separate vernier for each tube. A small thermometer, the bulb of which dips into the mercury in the cistern, is inserted at the bottom : and an eye­piece is also there fixed, so that the agate point can be viewed with more distinctness and accuracy. The whole instrument is made to turn round in azimuth, in order to verify the perpendicularity of the tubes and the scale. It is evident that there are many advantages attending this mode of construction, which are not to be found in the barometers as usu­ally formed for general use in this country. The absolute heights are more correctly and more satisfactorily determined ; and the per­manency of true action is more effectually noticed and secured. For, every part is under the inspection and control of the observer; and any derangement or imperfection in either of the tubes is imme­diately detected on comparison with the other. And, considering the care that has been taken in filling the tubes, and setting off the scale, it may justly be considered as a standard barometer . The pre­sent volume of the Philosophical Transactions will contain the first register of the observations that have been made with this instru­ment.


1969 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 368-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Payne

In recent discussions of the origins and process of animal domestication (Reed, 1961, Zeuner, 1963), both authors rely on two kinds of evidence: on the one hand, the present distributions and characteristics of the different breeds of whatever animal is being discussed, together with its feral and wild relatives, and, on the other hand, the past record, given by literary and pictorial sources and the bones from archaeological and geological sites. Increased recognition of the limitations of the past record, whether in the accuracy of the information it appears to give (as in the case of pictorial sources), or in the certainty of the deductions we are at present capable of drawing from it (this applies especially to the osteological record), has led these authors to argue mainly from the present situation, using the past record to confirm or amplify the existing picture.Arguing from the present, many hypotheses about the origins and process of domestication are available. The only test we have, when attempting to choose between these, lies in the direct evidence of the past record. The past record, it is freely admitted, is very fragmentary: the information provided by the present situation is more exact, ranges over a much wider field, and is more open to test and control. Nevertheless, the past record, however imperfect it is, is the only direct evidence we have about the process of domestication.


2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 319-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron W. Hughes

Abstract NAASR faces an existential dilemma. It is currently caught between the desire for greater numbers and panels that take place at the Annual Meeting of the AAR on the one hand, and the idea of a more exclusive group that focuses solely on historical and scientific analysis on the other. This paper argues that the future of NAASR resides in the latter option as opposed to the former. It even goes a step further and argues that NAASR should—intellectually, if not logistically—split from the AAR because as things currently stand the AAR defines the parameters of the conversation: NAASR, by default, becomes that which the AAR is not. However, in so doing, NAASR still defines itself using the discourses and categories of the AAR. NAASR’s physical departure from the AAR would provide it with the intellectual space necessary for further growth and reflection on things theoretical and methodological.


2021 ◽  
pp. 98-116
Author(s):  
Alicia Walker

Focusing on Early and Middle Byzantine (fourth-to-twelfth-century) objects, images, and texts, this essay explores the tension between, on the one hand, efforts of the Byzantine church and state to discourage and control bodily adornment and modification and, on the other hand, the extensive evidence of widespread and immoderate engagement with these practices. The enhancement and manipulation of Byzantine bodies is considered as both a real and a metaphoric phenomenon. Evidence culled from secular and sacred, written and material sources demonstrates the importance of bodily adornment and modification to our understanding of Byzantine material and visual culture.


Author(s):  
Lydia Lyashenko

The purpose of the article is to prove the expediency and scientific, methodological, conceptual, and categorical potential of Cultural studies as a science that may offer an updated perspective for the study of the problem of aesthetic values. Methodology. Methods of scientific analysis, comparison, and generalization during the elaboration of the source base and the method of systematization are used to determine the traditional and innovative directions of research of the problem of aesthetic values. Scientific novelty. The article considers the interdisciplinary and generalizing potential of Cultural studies on the example of the problem of study aesthetic values. The existing tendency to move the analysis of problems of humanities from separate sciences to the plane of interdisciplinary is emphasized. It was accented on the novelty and relevance of such interdisciplinary research within Cultural studies. Conclusions. The approach of Cultural studies offers an increase in the scale of generalization from aesthetic to actually global, which combines the experience of studying scientific problems in the traditional and extended areas. Given the fact that on the one hand, all material and spiritual values which surround man were born from culture, because culture is the cumulative result of productive human activity, and, on the other hand, culture absorbs them, being phenomenon generalized, interdisciplinary approach of Cultural studies is able to suggest an updated perspective on this problem on the border of traditional and non-traditional sciences and through the improvement of its conceptual and categorical apparatus to offer new ways to study.


Author(s):  
Ramprasad Sengupta

The discussions within this book have analysed the interdependences among economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainability. The social and environmental sustainability of development requires the process of growth to be socially non-disruptive and it should not involve any serious environmental risk of the collapse of its ecosystem. The former would require a just distribution of resources and social products among its people so that there is no serious poverty or inequality due to absolute or relative deprivation of resources or income for some of its people, and therefore no economic source of social tension. The empirical findings using advanced econometric and quantitative methods on the interrelationships among poverty, inequality, social tension, social discrimination, and religious polarization on the one hand and their fallouts in the form of crime, riots, and insurgencies across Indian states on the other have been quite informative, not always stereotypical, and insightful from the point of view of policy planning for social sustainability. The environmental sustainability condition would, on the other hand, require the reduction of the ecological footprint and improvement of environmental protection through conservation of resources and control of pollution, including CO...


Author(s):  
Charlotte Bedford

This chapter utilizes the Prison Radio Association's (PRA) core statement regarding ‘the power of radio’ as a starting point from which to explore the key ideas around radio as a socially and individually transformative medium in order to inform the understanding of how it came to be used in prison. The chapter outlines the shifting relationship between radio broadcasting and social change and argues that the evolution and establishment of radio within prisons is indicative of new opportunities for media activism, demonstrating the enduring social relevance and impact of radio. The chapter also places the development of National Prison Radio within a wider debate on the history and future of noncommercial broadcasting, based on the balance between governmental regulation and control on the one hand, and the countercultural opportunities it produces on the other.


2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (S1) ◽  
pp. 375-400
Author(s):  
Daniela Rohrbach-Schmidt

Abstract The article studies whether foreign skilled workers have similar access to licensed and more credentialed occupations, and whether they profit from these regulations in terms of similar wages in these occupations to comparable domestic skilled workers. The theoretical foundations of this article are concepts of signaling and occupational closure. The analyses use a sample of 60,000 employed persons from the 2006, 2012 and 2018 Employment Surveys of the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) and the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), and a reweighting approach to account for the selection on observables. Results show an ambivalent picture of the regulation of occupations: on the one hand, at least foreign skilled men earn similar wages to domestic skilled men in more closed occupations; on the other hand, foreign skilled workers are less likely to enter these positions and they have monetary disadvantages compared with domestic skilled workers in less closed occupations.


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