scholarly journals Noble Tradition and Blind Spots In U.S. Sustainability Philosophy

2019 ◽  
pp. 47-60
Author(s):  
Rutherford Cardinal Johnson
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Strategic Behaviour ◽  
The Past ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Blind Spots

The foundational philosophy that provides the context in which sustainability operates in any given period in history would seem to be key to determining success or failure. In order to have the greatest chance of success, reasonable openness to a wide array of potentially useful ideas would logically appear to be essential. Progress needs context, ignoring neither the truths nor the errors of the past. However, certain blind spots exist that may cause useful ideas of the past to be ignored. This study focuses on the situation of the United States and considers one potential deterrent to long-run effectiveness of sustainability – the routine shunning by Americans of “noble tradition” stemming from the aristocracy and feudalism and its derivatives as anathema to the principles of American democracy. That tradition, though not without its flaws or abuses (no society is free from that), was built arguably on precepts of sustainability – even before the term really existed as it is known today. It is argued that the principles from medieval agrarian society that persisted in one form or another until republican revolutions, the Great War, and finally in the mid-to-late-20th century (depending on the country) are beneficial to consider, and learning from them can benefit modern industry in terms of promoting sustainable practices in systems of production and labour, as well as social responsibility. In order to create a conceptual framework that can be used to consider the potential impact on sustainability programmes of blind spots, a multipoint gravitational model is proposed. The model demonstrates mechanisms by which sustainability efforts may be harmed due to blind spots. Also, the potential for society to impose a cost on firms or individuals that attempt to consider unpopular tradition is considered via payoff analysis of strategic behaviour. That demonstrates the difficulty in breaking through the wall imposed by a blind spot.

scholarly journals Noble Tradition and Blind Spots In U.S. Sustainability Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 47-60
Author(s):  
Rutherford Cardinal Johnson
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Strategic Behaviour ◽  
The Past ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Blind Spots

The foundational philosophy that provides the context in which sustainability operates in any given period in history would seem to be key to determining success or failure. In order to have the greatest chance of success, reasonable openness to a wide array of potentially useful ideas would logically appear to be essential. Progress needs context, ignoring neither the truths nor the errors of the past. However, certain blind spots exist that may cause useful ideas of the past to be ignored. This study focuses on the situation of the United States and considers one potential deterrent to long-run effectiveness of sustainability – the routine shunning by Americans of “noble tradition” stemming from the aristocracy and feudalism and its derivatives as anathema to the principles of American democracy. That tradition, though not without its flaws or abuses (no society is free from that), was built arguably on precepts of sustainability – even before the term really existed as it is known today. It is argued that the principles from medieval agrarian society that persisted in one form or another until republican revolutions, the Great War, and finally in the mid-to-late-20th century (depending on the country) are beneficial to consider, and learning from them can benefit modern industry in terms of promoting sustainable practices in systems of production and labour, as well as social responsibility. In order to create a conceptual framework that can be used to consider the potential impact on sustainability programmes of blind spots, a multipoint gravitational model is proposed. The model demonstrates mechanisms by which sustainability efforts may be harmed due to blind spots. Also, the potential for society to impose a cost on firms or individuals that attempt to consider unpopular tradition is considered via payoff analysis of strategic behaviour. That demonstrates the difficulty in breaking through the wall imposed by a blind spot.

scholarly journals Noble Tradition and Blind Spots In U.S. Sustainability Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-60
Author(s):  
Rutherford Cardinal Johnson
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Strategic Behaviour ◽  
The Past ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Blind Spots

The foundational philosophy that provides the context in which sustainability operates in any given period in history would seem to be key to determining success or failure. In order to have the greatest chance of success, reasonable openness to a wide array of potentially useful ideas would logically appear to be essential. Progress needs context, ignoring neither the truths nor the errors of the past. However, certain blind spots exist that may cause useful ideas of the past to be ignored. This study focuses on the situation of the United States and considers one potential deterrent to long-run effectiveness of sustainability – the routine shunning by Americans of “noble tradition” stemming from the aristocracy and feudalism and its derivatives as anathema to the principles of American democracy. That tradition, though not without its flaws or abuses (no society is free from that), was built arguably on precepts of sustainability – even before the term really existed as it is known today. It is argued that the principles from medieval agrarian society that persisted in one form or another until republican revolutions, the Great War, and finally in the mid-to-late-20th century (depending on the country) are beneficial to consider, and learning from them can benefit modern industry in terms of promoting sustainable practices in systems of production and labour, as well as social responsibility. In order to create a conceptual framework that can be used to consider the potential impact on sustainability programmes of blind spots, a multipoint gravitational model is proposed. The model demonstrates mechanisms by which sustainability efforts may be harmed due to blind spots. Also, the potential for society to impose a cost on firms or individuals that attempt to consider unpopular tradition is considered via payoff analysis of strategic behaviour. That demonstrates the difficulty in breaking through the wall imposed by a blind spot.

scholarly journals Job Polarization and Structural Change

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZsÓfia L. Bárány ◽  
Christian Siegel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Simple Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Average Wage ◽  
High Wage ◽  
Relative Wages ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Job Polarization

We document that job polarization—contrary to the consensus— has started as early as the 1950s in the United States: middle-wage workers have been losing both in terms of employment and average wage growth compared to low- and high-wage workers. Given that polarization is a long-run phenomenon and closely linked to the shift from manufacturing to services, we propose a structural change driven explanation, where we explicitly model the sectoral choice of workers. Our simple model does remarkably well not only in matching the evolution of sectoral employment, but also of relative wages over the past 50 years. (JEL E24, J21, J22, J24, J31)

Incarceration and Rupture: The Past in the Present

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Brace
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
The United States ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Status ◽  
Racial Slavery

This chapter focuses on the prison industrial complex in the United States to ask again about what gets remembered and how, to take us back to the question of what happens to a manumitted slave, and to revisit the figure of the slave as an uncanny object in the blind spot of modernity. It contests the sharp divide between past and present that lies behind the discourse of new slavery and focuses not on rupture, but on the continuities and persistent connections between the racial slavery of the past and the incarceration of the present. It looks at a past that refuses to pass away by exploring the meanings of imprisonment, the prison itself, the border regime and the status of felons and prisoners as outsiders, shut out of civil society.

NONLINEARITIES IN THE DYNAMICS OF THE EURO AREA DEMAND FOR M1

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Calza ◽  
Andrea Zaghini
Keyword(s):  
Error Correction ◽  
Euro Area ◽  
Money Demand ◽  
The United States ◽  
Error Correction Model ◽  
Correction Model ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Theoretical Predictions ◽  
The Relationship

This paper finds evidence of nonlinearities in the dynamics of the euro area demand for the narrow aggregate M1. A long-run money demand relationship is first estimated over a sample period covering the past three decades. Although the parameters of the relationship are jointly stable, there are indications of nonlinearity in the residuals of the error-correction model. This nonlinearity is explicitly modeled using a fairly general Markov switching error-correction model with satisfactory results. The empirical findings of the paper are consistent with theoretical predictions of nonlinearities in the dynamics of adjustment to equilibrium stemming from “buffer stock” and “target-threshold” models and with analogous empirical evidence for European countries and the United States.

US Fertility Rates and Childbearing in American Economic History, 1800–2010

2018 ◽  
pp. 74-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha J. Bailey ◽  
Brad J. Hershbein
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Child Survival ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fertility Rates ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Women's Wages ◽  
Race Ethnicity

Over the past two centuries, the United States has witnessed dramatic changes in fertility rates and childbearing. This chapter describes shifts in childbearing and family size from 1800 to 2010 and describes the role of different factors in this evolution. Demand factors such as industrialization, urbanization, rising family incomes, public health improvements, and the growth in women’s wages generally reduced the benefits and raised the costs of having many children. Supply factors such as increases in infant and child survival and improvements in the technology of contraception and abortion have also altered parents’ decisions about their childbearing. This chapter summarizes the long-run trends in US fertility rates and completed childbearing, both overall and by mothers’ race/ethnicity and geography. Next, it evaluates evidence on the determinants of childbearing, including both economic and demographic explanations for these patterns. A final section weighs the evidence supporting the existence of two fertility transitions.

Long-Run Convergence of Ethnic Skill Differentials: The Children and Grandchildren of the Great Migration

ILR Review ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-573 ◽  
Author(s):  
George J. Borjas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Great Migration ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Surveys ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Great Migration

This paper investigates whether the ethnic skill differentials introduced into the United States by the inflow of very dissimilar immigrant groups during the Great Migration of 1880–1910 have disappeared during the past century. An analysis of the 1910, 1940, and 1980 Censuses and the General Social Surveys reveals that those ethnic differentials have indeed narrowed, but that it might take four generations, or roughly 100 years, for them to disappear. The analysis also indicates that the economic mobility experienced by American-born blacks, especially since World War Two, resembles that of the white ethnic groups that made up the Great Migration.

The Tocqueville Problem: Civic Engagement in American Democracy

1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theda Skocpol
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Social Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Concerns

Over the past 15 years, my scholarship has been devoted to understanding the patterns, the possibilities, and the impossibilities of politics and social policy in the United States. In this essay, therefore, I have decided to use historical evidence to address current public and scholarly debates about civic engagement in American democracy. As I hope to remind us all, social science historianscanspeak clearly to contemporary public concerns. We may be able to introduce some better evidence and more sophisticated explanations into ongoing debates.

Populism Studies: The Case for Theoretical and Comparative Reconstruction

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cihan Tuğal
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
The Past ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Methodology ◽  
Comparative Reconstruction ◽  
Blind Spots

Studies of populism have shifted from substantive to discursive/performative and institutional perspectives in recent decades. This shift resolved some long-standing problems but insulated the analysis of populism from theoretical and methodological debates in the social sciences. Theoretical restrictions have gone hand in hand with geographical neglect: The near-exclusive focus on the United States, Europe, and Latin America reinforces the blind spots of these existing approaches. An integration of overlooked regions holds the potential for theoretical reconstruction, even though such comparative broadening could as well simply reproduce the persistent impasses. Moreover, post-2016 developments have induced a return to substantive issues, throwing into sharp relief what populism studies have been missing during the past decades. The main challenge today is synthesizing socioeconomic analyses with institutionalist and discourse-theoretical advances without falling into eclecticism. Breaking away from the entrenched regional orientations to embrace a more global-historical methodology could help such an endeavor. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 47 is July 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The Creation of the American in Paris

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-39
Author(s):  
William Cloonan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Henry James ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Cold War

Henry James’ The American, influenced by de Tocqueville’s studies of American democracy, creates a paradigm of Franco-American images of each other which will persist, with variations and reversals, until almost the end of the Cold War. Simply put, the French see the Americans as wealthy, yet culturally naïve, while the Americans see the French as highly cultivated but duplicitous. The United States is the present and the future, while France is the past.

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