scholarly journals The Stranger

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Christopher Young

<p>How can humanity possibly become sustainable in the future if we cannot think or plan sustainably in the present? This project aims to challenge people’s current thinking, raising awareness that the issue of sustainability will not be resolved without a significant cultural shift in our relationship with our world’s environmental systems.  The thesis addresses this through an architectural narrative conceived to enhance the viewer’s awareness of how our interdependent relationship with machines and industry has led to this dire situation. Prior to the Industrial Revolution the environment could regenerate and recover faster than humanity could destroy it. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution this changed and environmental degradation has rapidly increased out of control. The result is that today we need to evolve and change our thinking rather than be limited by our tools if we are to be sustainable. It is this at present unsustainable relationship between mechanical industry and human behaviour that this thesis exposes through speculative architecture. The investigation explores how architectural allegory can be an effective way of conveying a message with multiple layers of interpretation and meaning - a message capable of addressing important environmental, political, economic and social issues.  The title of the thesis is taken from Albert Camus’s novel l’Étranger (The Stranger) as well as Georg Simmel’s essay “The Stranger”, which was written as an excursus to a chapter dealing with sociology of space in his book Soziologie. In this thesis, as an architectural allegory, the Stranger’s architectural habitat is composed of a myriad of integrated machines that symbolise our time and place identity: a Theodolite that surveys the land; a Clock that keeps the time; a Loom that reflects the folklore of fate; a Compass that represents direction, and a Camera Obscura through which the Stranger views his/her surroundings. The Stranger lives in the Camera Obscura, a compartment with a periscopic lens focused across the Cook Strait to South Island. When (s)he activates the Loom, it pulls the living compartment along tracks toward the core, where (s)he descends into the central volume of the Theodolite. A Compass on the top of the structure points towards landmarks across the Cook Strait while the mechanical workings are inspired by the internals of a mechanical Clock.  The overall programme for the thesis investigation is an Aquaponics Lab, a self-contained environment that grows marine life in an aquaculture system, using their waste to fertilise plant life in a hydroponic system, and using their nutrients in turn to feed the marine life. The flora and fauna continually sustain one another in an eternal cycle - the machines replicating a perfect natural system. The thesis takes the form of a day in the life of the Stranger. The reader witnesses the sequential daily rituals of the Stranger as (s)he moves through the machines from sunrise to sunset.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Christopher Young

<p>How can humanity possibly become sustainable in the future if we cannot think or plan sustainably in the present? This project aims to challenge people’s current thinking, raising awareness that the issue of sustainability will not be resolved without a significant cultural shift in our relationship with our world’s environmental systems.  The thesis addresses this through an architectural narrative conceived to enhance the viewer’s awareness of how our interdependent relationship with machines and industry has led to this dire situation. Prior to the Industrial Revolution the environment could regenerate and recover faster than humanity could destroy it. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution this changed and environmental degradation has rapidly increased out of control. The result is that today we need to evolve and change our thinking rather than be limited by our tools if we are to be sustainable. It is this at present unsustainable relationship between mechanical industry and human behaviour that this thesis exposes through speculative architecture. The investigation explores how architectural allegory can be an effective way of conveying a message with multiple layers of interpretation and meaning - a message capable of addressing important environmental, political, economic and social issues.  The title of the thesis is taken from Albert Camus’s novel l’Étranger (The Stranger) as well as Georg Simmel’s essay “The Stranger”, which was written as an excursus to a chapter dealing with sociology of space in his book Soziologie. In this thesis, as an architectural allegory, the Stranger’s architectural habitat is composed of a myriad of integrated machines that symbolise our time and place identity: a Theodolite that surveys the land; a Clock that keeps the time; a Loom that reflects the folklore of fate; a Compass that represents direction, and a Camera Obscura through which the Stranger views his/her surroundings. The Stranger lives in the Camera Obscura, a compartment with a periscopic lens focused across the Cook Strait to South Island. When (s)he activates the Loom, it pulls the living compartment along tracks toward the core, where (s)he descends into the central volume of the Theodolite. A Compass on the top of the structure points towards landmarks across the Cook Strait while the mechanical workings are inspired by the internals of a mechanical Clock.  The overall programme for the thesis investigation is an Aquaponics Lab, a self-contained environment that grows marine life in an aquaculture system, using their waste to fertilise plant life in a hydroponic system, and using their nutrients in turn to feed the marine life. The flora and fauna continually sustain one another in an eternal cycle - the machines replicating a perfect natural system. The thesis takes the form of a day in the life of the Stranger. The reader witnesses the sequential daily rituals of the Stranger as (s)he moves through the machines from sunrise to sunset.</p>


Author(s):  
Robert M. Chiles ◽  
Garrett Broad ◽  
Mark Gagnon ◽  
Nicole Negowetti ◽  
Leland Glenna ◽  
...  

AbstractThe emergence of the “4th Industrial Revolution,” i.e. the convergence of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, advanced materials, and bioengineering technologies, could accelerate socioeconomic insecurities and anxieties or provide beneficial alternatives to the status quo. In the post-Covid-19 era, the entities that are best positioned to capitalize on these innovations are large firms, which use digital platforms and big data to orchestrate vast ecosystems of users and extract market share across industry sectors. Nonetheless, these technologies also have the potential to democratize ownership, broaden political-economic participation, and reduce environmental harms. We articulate the potential sociotechnical pathways in this high-stakes crossroads by analyzing cellular agriculture, an exemplary 4th Industrial Revolution technology that synergizes computer science, biopharma, tissue engineering, and food science to grow cultured meat, dairy, and egg products from cultured cells and/or genetically modified yeast. Our exploration of this space involved multi-sited ethnographic research in both (a) the cellular agriculture community and (b) alternative economic organizations devoted to open source licensing, member-owned cooperatives, social financing, and platform business models. Upon discussing how these latter approaches could potentially facilitate alternative sociotechnical pathways in cellular agriculture, we reflect upon the broader implications of this work with respect to the 4th Industrial Revolution and the enduring need for public policy reform.


2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 24-52
Author(s):  
Hamid Mavani

The adoption of the Mu`tazili school of “rationalist” theology and the institution of ijtihad enabled Shi`i legal theory to exhibit vibrancy and made it adaptable to changing contingencies and circumstances. But because Shi`i jurists did not face the challenge of governing a state, their juridical focus and orientation remained fixated on resolving issues confronting the laity or their followers (muqallid) at a personal level and did not provide an ethical framework for the ijtihad process. The establishment of a Shi`i state in Iran in 1979, which forced them to tackle social, political, economic, educational, and cultural issues, demanded a change in orientation – away from the individual and toward society as the unit of analysis vis-à-vis ijtihad. They marshaled various methods, legal devices, and strategies to address contemporary social issues in order to provide pragmatic guidance to the citizens that would be in conformity with the moral and ethical principles laid out in the revelatory sources. This paper examines the writings of Ayatullahs Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Muhammad Mahdi Shamsuddin, Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlullah, and Ruhullah Musavi al-Khomeini and studies this phenomenon of change from individual-oriented ijtihad to society-oriented ijtihad.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 937
Author(s):  
Hui Liu

The goal of college English teaching is not only to convey language knowledge and improve students’ language skills, but also closely related to the current political, economic, social and cultural realities. Its textbooks are largely a manifestation of the country’s dominant ideology and also the way the ruling class realizes social control. This study, based on Professor Apple’s theory of critical pedagogy, attempts to provide an insight into the most commonly used college EFL textbooks in Mainland China and show what and how ideologies and values are presented on the pages. Literature and content analysis methods are employed. The results reveal that the two sets of textbooks are imbued with the ideological ideas which center on the theme of "harmony", highlighting the peaceful coexistence between the country, society and individuals. Dominant ideologies have been implemented as the core spirit of textbook compilation, and the themes such as multiplicity, equality, tolerance and so on frequently appear in explicit and implicit ways. The implicitness of political ideologies, the prominence of economic development, the dominance of social issues, the awakening of individual consciousness, etc. are expressed and transmitted through EFL textbooks.


Lex Russica ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 119-143
Author(s):  
I. A. Isaev

The paper is devoted to complex and multifaceted relations arising in the field of public administration, the symbolic embodiment of which is the “ruling machine”. There is a long tradition based on the analogy between the machine mechanism and human social structures. Since the era of the absolutist states and the industrial revolution, these analogies have been transferred to a special social and organizational structure, which is “bureaucracy”. A special place is occupied by the technique of management, technology of domination and organizational and technical standards, which gives the bureaucracy an image of a technical structure rather than a human team. At the same time, the strict regulation of this structure, based on a system of norms, regulations and codifications, makes the bureaucratic structure permeable to the mechanisms of legal regulation. Historically, the “ruling machine” has demonstrated its adaptability to a variety of political, economic and legal contexts, demonstrating its technical “neutrality”.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
G. Jussupova

The processes of globalization affect many economic and social processes, and the labor market is no exception. The situation in the labor market is always the center of attention for the state, business, and society as a whole. It determines the economic development of the country, social policy, the competitiveness of enterprises, and human capital. This article discusses global challenges such as the fourth industrial revolution, the digital transformation of society and industry, migration processes and informal employment, the problems of identifying social status for the population, and the system of accounting for social benefits. Because the labor market is experiencing the strongest impact of political, economic, social, and demographic processes, it has its own characteristics in each country, and this article discusses the internal problems of the Kazakhstan labor market. In addition, the article provides suggestions for improving social policy issues, employment through the automation of social processes and services, the digitalization of the public and private sectors, and the creation and development of information infrastructure of the labor market.


2021 ◽  
pp. 24-34
Author(s):  
G. E. Ganina ◽  
Yu. A. Ostrovskiy ◽  
A. P. Yakovleva

A new approach to the problem of full automation of production is considered. It is shown that along with technical issues, one of the main places among the issues of full automation of production is occupied by social issues, since full automation radically changes the structure of labor resources. The novel division of labor in the process of life activity led to the formation of new organizational solutions that also affected the automation environment. This is primarily due to the fact that along with individuals inventing and implementing automatic devices, a certain number of workers, who were freed from routine work by automats and had to be organized in a new way in the work of the team, appeared. The subsequent era of the industrial revolution is associated not only with the development of new types of energy, but also with the formation of new organizational solutions in production. It is reasonable to imagine the development of fully automated production as a process of transition to a state in which individuals who consume products simultaneously change its structure. The driving forces behind the development of fully automated production are individuals who have been freed from routine work as a result of automation and have been given the opportunity to realize their creative abilities. Taking into account the effect of the «universal law of the elevation of needs», it is necessary to consider the appropriate and most effective form of the structure of fully automated production as a permanently changing matrix containing a changing set of individual customers and a changing set of automation tools. Familiarity with the new approach to the problem of full automation will help enterprise designers to better understand the composition of tasks for the reconstruction of production.


Author(s):  
John H. Perkins

Plant breeding in general and wheat breeding specifically were rudimentary activities on many grounds in the nineteenth century. Not many people engaged in the activity. Those who did were self-taught. because no formal educational programs existed in the subject. For the most part, they had only a few very modest institutional bases within which to work. Many farmers paid them little or no attention, and governments usually ignored their contributions and gave them next to no support. They had no organized way of broadly disseminating their results, which in any case were few in number. By 1970, wheat and other plant breeders occupied a very different position within both the scientific and political economic landscapes. Many people worked as breeders. They were highly trained in educational programs dedicated to the reproduction of plant breeders. Elaborate networks of institutions gave them employment. A substantial proportion of farmers cared very much what they did, and governments gave substantial, sometimes lavish, support. They had means of communicating their work that included both scientific and popular outlets. And they had substantial results to convey to farmers and the general public, some of them remarkable either for their scientific cleverness or for their broad political, economic, and ecological impacts, or both. Another way of gaining perspective on the change in status of wheat and other plant breeders is to suggest that their absence might not have been noticed by anybody but their families had they suddenly disappeared in the nineteenth century. In contrast, the twentieth century came increasingly to depend upon the plant breeders. Cessation of wheat breeding after 1970, for example, would have put some agricultural systems in distinct danger of slow decline or even collapse and failure. In both political economic and ecological terms, an increasing portion of the global human community became absolutely dependent upon wheat breeders and other plant scientists, certainly for prosperity as we now know it and possibly for survival and security. The transformation of wheat breeding from nearly invisible to virtually indispensable resulted from two mutually interacting events: a commercial-industrial revolution in agriculture and construction of a new science of plant breeding.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Joseph Straus

As one of the building blocks of the fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence has attracted much public attention and sparked protracted discussions about its impact on future technological, economic and social developments. This contribution conveys insights into artificial intelligence’s basic methods and tools, its main achievements, its economic environment and the surrounding ethical and social issues. Based on the announced and taken measures of the EU organs in the area of artificial intelligence, the contribution analyses the position of Europe in the global context.


Popular Music ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Tagg

BothPopular Musicand the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) have been in existence for almost a generation. Given the radical social and political changes affecting the general spheres of work, education and research since the establishment of those two institutions in 1981, it is perhaps time for popular music scholars to review their own historical position and to work out strategies for the brave new world of monetarism facing those who will hopefully survive another generation after we quinquagenarian baby boomers of the rock era have disappeared from the academic scene. Of course, such a process of intellectual and ideological stocktaking requires detailed discussion of a wide range of political, economic and social issues that cannot be covered in a single article. I will therefore restrict the account that follows to a discussion of one particular set of historical strands affecting the development of popular music studies. This part of our history is virtually unknown in the anglophone quarters that have, for obvious reasons of language and music media hegemony, dominated the international field of popular music studies. It is, however, as I hope to show, a story of considerable relevance to more general problems of music education and research at the turn of the millennium. I shall return to these broader issues at the end of the article.


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