Mega-events, globalisation and urban legacy: events in China in the early twenty-first century

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Roche
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Western World ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The West ◽  
Urban Green Spaces ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Mega Event

The contemporary period of globalisation involves various economic and other ‘global shifts’ from Western to non-Western societies. This chapter explores the idea that these deeper social changes are reflected in the world of mega-events, notably in the ‘global shift’ in mega-event locations away from the West to increasingly include non-Western world regions. The chapter views contemporary mega-events as ‘multi-theme legacy park’ projects for their host cities. Their shift to new non-Western contexts is illustrated by reviewing mega-events in contemporary China, particularly the cases of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the Guangzhou 2010 Asian Game and the Shanghai 2010 Expo 2010. The chapter shows that, in spite of many differences, at least one notable commonality between the Sydney 200O Olympic model and event legacies in Beijing and Shanghai in particular is the construction of major new urban green spaces. These urban park-building and park-renewing projects have typically aimed to embody, on a permanent basis, environmental and recreational (rather than sporting) values and vision of urbanism. In addition these mega-event projects all aimed, in comparable ways (even if to greater or lesser extents), to use these new urban parks as hubs and catalysts from which other (social and economic) mega-event legacy influences might also be developed.

Slavery and the Trumpocene: It's Not the End of the World

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Claire Colebrook
Keyword(s):  
Living System ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Geological Period

There is something more catastrophic than the end of the world, especially when ‘world’ is understood as the horizon of meaning and expectation that has composed the West. If the Anthropocene is the geological period marking the point at which the earth as a living system has been altered by ‘anthropos,’ the Trumpocene marks the twenty-first-century recognition that the destruction of the planet has occurred by way of racial violence, slavery and annihilation. Rather than saving the world, recognizing the Trumpocene demands that we think about destroying the barbarism that has marked the earth.

Western Countries: Future of Multiculturalism in Context of Employment

2012 ◽  
pp. 16-25
Author(s):  
M. Klupt
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Statistical Information ◽  
Western World ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The World

Will immigrant minorities change the Western world? Two decades ago this question seemed irrelevant as it was expected that the West will change the world in its image. Today, the same question is perceived as rhetorical. The answer is obvious, and the dispute is merely over directions, extent and possible consequences of future changes. The center of this dispute is the multiculturalism – the concept, policy and praxis praising diversity of cultures and denying any of them a vested right to dominate not only in the world at large, but even in a particular country. The assessment of its perspectives presupposes a variety of research approaches in view of its complexity. In the present article only one of them is be used for the analysis focused on the employment of immigrant minorities from the world's South. The viability of such approach is based on two circumstances. Firstly, the employment indexes considered in ethnical context belong to the most important characteristics of ethno-social structure of a society. Secondly, the availability of broad statistical information about employment allows for resting upon empirical data, possibly avoiding a needless bias toward purely theoretical constructions.

Mega-events and urban development: Olympics and legacies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Roche
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
The Other ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Urban Place ◽  
Place And Space ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
The One ◽  
Mega Event

This chapter explores the ‘material embedding’ of mega-event spectacles in the legacies they leave in host cities which can be of both a negative and positive kind, and consist of the creation of new place and space legacies. These themes are illustrated with reference to the modern Olympics, and particularly in the contemporary period. The chapter’s main focus is on Olympic mega-events as urban ‘place-makers’. That is they often involve new constructions, on the one hand of sports and related event facilities complexes, and on the other hand of community-related developments in housing and places of employment. Since the turn of the millennium they are now effectively required by the IOC bidding system to leave such legacies. The chapter explore such legacies in some detail in the influential case of the Sydney 2000 Olympic project which, in some respects, was understood to represent a ‘model’ for subsequent Olympic cities. The case of the Sydney Olympics is seen to show how mega-events can simultaneously be urban ‘space-makers’ as well as ‘place-makers’. Since Sydney mega-events have often been notably associated with strategically important values and policies of both ‘greening’ and humanising modern urbanisation through the provision of open and green spaces in urban centres.

“The Wizard of Oz and Wicked”

2018 ◽  
pp. 205-222
Author(s):  
Paul R. Laird
Keyword(s):  
Young Woman ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Wizard Of Oz ◽  
Successful Attempt ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
New Interpretation

This chapter brings new insights to Wicked, the most successful attempt to rework Baum’s story since the 1939 movie. Wicked is the biggest musical hit of the early twenty-first century, but its phenomenal success would never have been possible without its close ties to The Wizard of Oz. Based on Gregory Maguire’s novel by the same name that turns L. Frank Baum’s story on its head, the musical Wicked makes the Wicked Witch of the West a misunderstood young woman doing battle with a wizard who is an interloper from another world that has taken over Oz and made the Talking Animals scapegoats for all of the land’s ills. Despite their new interpretation of the familiar tale, the show’s creators wanted to include as many resonances as possible from the famed MGM film, a crusade that took them into difficult legal waters that resulted in unwelcome changes to the show courtesy of lawyers at Universal Pictures, the show’s principal producer. This chapter is a consideration of how Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, the writers of Wicked, appropriated narrative and musical aspects of Baum’s original book and the 1939 film, where they ran into problems in doing so, and how some of those problems were solved.

scholarly journals Historical Persistence of Alcohol-Induced Mortality in the Russian Federations: Legacy of Early Industrialization

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 656-661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kozlov ◽  
Alexander Libman
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Russian Regions ◽  
Male Mortality ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Path Dependent ◽  
Mediator Variable

Abstract Aims The study aims to investigate insofar regional differences in alcohol-induced mortality in Russia, which emerged during the early industrialization of the country, persisted over a prolonged period of time (from late nineteenth to early twenty-first century), surviving fundamental political and social changes Russia experienced. Methods Multivariate regression models with historical and contemporary data on alcohol-induced mortality in Russian regions were estimated to document the persistence of spatial patterns of mortality, as well as to identify the possible mediating variables. Numerous robustness checks were used to corroborate the results. Results Alcohol-induced male mortality in Russian regions in 1880s–1890s is significantly and strongly correlated with male mortality due to accidental alcohol poisoning in Russian regions in 2010–2012. For female mortality, no robust correlation was established. The results for male mortality do not change if one controls for a variety of other determinants of alcohol-induced mortality and are not driven by outlier regions. Consumption of strong alcohol (in particular vodka) appears to be the mediator variable explaining this persistence. Conclusions Hazardous drinking behavioral patterns, once they emerge and crystalize during the periods of fragmentation of the traditional society and the early onsets of modernization and urbanization, can be extremely persistent. Even highly intrusive policy interventions at a later stage (like those of the Soviet government) may turn out to be insufficient to change the path-dependent outcomes.

Foucault’s Folie et déraison: its influence and its contemporary relevance

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-358
Author(s):  
Andrew Scull
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
History Of Psychiatry ◽  
First Century ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Impact

Michel Foucault remains one of the most influential intellectuals in the early twenty-first century world. This paper examines the origins and impact of his first major work, Folie et déraison, on the history of psychiatry, particularly though not exclusively in the world of Anglo-American scholarship. The impact and limits of Foucault’s work on the author’s own contributions to the history of psychiatry are examined, as is the larger influence of Madness and Civilization (as it is known to most Anglophones) on the nascent social history of psychiatry. The paper concludes with an assessment of the sources of the appeal of Foucault’s work among some scholars, and notes his declining influence on contemporary scholars working on the history of psychiatry.

Theodicy Sociologised: Suffering Smart in the Twenty-First Century

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Cosmic Order ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Normative Order

Theodicy is the branch of theology traditionally concerned with justifying palpable injustices in the world that are presumably the product of a just deity. The classical sociologists appreciated theodicy's relevance in terms of different social attitudes towards human suffering: is it to be tolerated, minimised, redressed or somehow transcended? Each answer implies a different view about the place of humanity in some larger cosmic order. In modern political theory, the question is normally specified in terms of the problem of distributive justice. However, the re-negotiation of the boundary between biology and sociology in the early twenty-first century is forcing a re-engagement with theodicy in its original broad sense, especially as we are increasingly asked to set resource distribution policies that bind across generations of humans and non-humans alike. In this context, as humans acquire an increasingly ‘godlike’ perspective on the normative order, suffering may come to be seen in more strictly instrumental terms – indeed, as itself a resource that might be recycled to produce good in the long term. Thus, we may be entering an era of ‘moral entrepreneurship’.

Mega-Events and Social Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Roche
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The West ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
The Media ◽  
Relative Decline ◽  
Modernization Process ◽  
The Rise Of China

This book analyses the biggest, most spectacular and at times most controversial types of events, namely ‘mega-events’, and particularly recent Olympics and Expos. In this respect it builds on the sociological, historical and empirical account of mega-events originally presented in Roche’s influential study ‘Mega-Events and Modernity’ (2000). This new book addresses how mega-events have changed in recent times. It argues that contemporary mega-events reflect the major social changes which now influence our societies, particularly in the West, and which amount to a new ‘second phase’ of the modernization process. These are particularly visible in the media, urban and global locational aspects of mega-events. The book suggests that contemporary mega-events, both in their achievements and their vulnerabilities, reflect, in the media sphere, the rise of the internet; in the urban sphere, de-industrialisation and the growing ecological crisis; and in the global sphere, the relative decline of the West and the rise of China and other ‘emerging’ countries. It investigates the way in which contemporary mega-events reflect, but also mark and influence, social changes in each of these three contexts.

Comparative Legal Families and Comparative Legal Traditions

2019 ◽  
pp. 422-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Patrick Glenn
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
First Century ◽  
Static State ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
System A ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Common ◽  
Legal Normativity

For much of the twentieth century, comparatists have divided the world into ‘legal families’ (such as the civil law, the common law, socialist law, etc.) and assigned each (national) legal system a place in one of them. The chapter argues that this taxonomic enterprise has largely remained at the descriptive state, entailed a misleading division into fixed categories, and that is has failed to produce real comparison between laws. It is also too static, state-centred, and Euro-centric to be workable under conditions of late twentieth and early twenty-first century globalism. It should be replaced by the paradigm of ‘legal traditions’ which not only emphasizes the evolving nature of law, but also avoids dividing the world into clearly separated groupings. Instead, a ‘legal traditions’ approach focuses on the fluidity, interaction, and resulting hybridity of laws, thus facilitating their comparison. As it is not tied to Western-style national legal systems, it can easily capture the laws of the whole world, including the increasingly important non-state forms of legal normativity. Since the chapter was written by the late H. Patrick Glenn over a decade ago, the editors added a postscript bringing the reader up to date on the scholarship on, and the debate about, legal families and traditions.

Industrialization, Hubs, and Catch-up

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-161
Author(s):  
Deepak Nayyar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Catch Up

This chapter analyses the striking changes in the geographical distribution of manufacturing production amongst countries and across continents since 1750, a period that spans more than two-and-a-half centuries, which could be described as the movement of industrial hubs in the world economy over time. Until around 1820, world manufacturing production was concentrated in China and India. The Industrial Revolution, followed by the advent of colonialism, led to deindustrialization in Asia and, by 1880, Britain became the world industrial hub that extended to northwestern Europe. The United States surpassed Britain in 1900, and was the dominant industrial hub in the world until 2000. During 1950 to 2000, the relative, though not absolute, importance of Western Europe diminished, and Japan emerged as a significant industrial hub, while the other new industrial hub, the USSR and Eastern Europe, was short lived. The early twenty-first century, 2000–2017, witnessed a rapid decline of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan as industrial hubs, to be replaced largely by Asia, particularly China. This process of shifting hubs, associated with industrialization in some countries and deindustrialization in other countries in the past, might be associated with premature deindustrialization in yet other countries in the future.

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