Mediating American hospitality: Mark Zuckerberg’s challenge to Donald Trump?

In 2017, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, travelled America with a former White House photographer who took pictures of him sharing meals with families, workforces and refugee communities. These were then posted to Zuckerberg’s Facebook page, usually with a post by Zuckerberg drawing attention to socioeconomic issues affecting different American communities. This article argues that Zuckerberg is mediated on this tour as a worthy populist contender to Donald Trump, albeit of a centrist, liberal, corporate kind. In particular, divisions along the lines of race, migration and class, which have been appropriated and emphasised by Trump, are apparently bridged and resolved through the representation of Zuckerberg, and the promotion of Facebook as a mediated fulcrum for civil society. Zuckerberg is pictured sharing food with, for example, Republican voters in Ohio and Somali migrants in Minnesota. We investigate how the differences projected between Zuckerberg and Trump pivot on the commodification of hospitality, particularly the mediation of shared meals, American hospitality, masculinity and ‘diversity work’. We contextualise this analysis within an understanding of how Silicon Valley’s monopoly capitalism perpetuates inequalities in its workforces and through its product design. We also attempt to make sense of the different social actors involved in Zuckerberg’s mediated ‘Year of Travel’, including the PR team, the people in the photographs, the commenters, as well as the users of Facebook. Through these contextualisations, we argue that this mediated contestation of hospitality – who is welcome in American society, who is not and why – is central to understanding the tensions in contemporary American political culture.

Water Treatment With Conventional and Alternative Coagulants: A Review

There is no access to basic sanitation for half the world's population, leading to Socioeconomic issues, such as scarcity of drinking water and the spread of diseases. In this way, it is of vital importance to develop water management technologies relevant to the target population. In addition, in the separation form of water treatment, the compound often used as a coagulant in water treatment is aluminum sulfate, which provides good results for raw water turbidity and color removal. Studies show, however, that its deposition in the human body, even Alzheimer's disease, can cause serious harm to health and disease development. The study aims to improve the coagulation/flocculation stage related to the amount of flakes, including the absence of metal sludge formed. Initial studies were concerned with assisting and comparing natural and chemical coagulants. The key chemicals used for coagulation are aluminum sulfate (alum) and poly aluminum chloride, also known as PACL and ferric chloride.

From gradual erosion to revitalization: National Social Dialogue Institutions and policy effectiveness

We explore the factors behind the long-term erosion of National Social Dialogue Institutions (NSDIs) to provide insights about the conditions for their revitalization. By applying policy analysis insights into the industrial relations field, we argue that limited policy effectiveness goes a long way towards explaining the erosion experienced by many NSDIs worldwide in recent years. Drawing on a global survey and on case studies of NSDIs in Brazil, Italy and South Korea, we show that these institutions’ policy effectiveness crucially depends on combinations of their problem-solving capacity, an encompassing mandate to deal with relevant socioeconomic issues and an enabling environment that grants the inclusion of social dialogue into decision making. With regard to rekindling their role, the article provides substantial evidence that two sub-dimensions of effectiveness are key: enjoying political support and having an ‘effective mandate’ as opposed to relying on just a formal remit to deal with socioeconomic issues of interest.

The Japanese Constitution

The Constitution of Japan is the oldest unamended supreme law in the world. This chapter examines the determinants of constitutional stability and its implications for Japanese politics. First, cross-national constitutional data shows that the COJ is uncommonly short, leaving many details regarding political institutions to be determined by law. This makes it possible to alter institutional rules through regular legislation, lessening the structural need for constitutional amendments. Second, strong disagreements among elites and citizens have insulated the COJ from polarizing reforms. While a supermajority of legislators support amendments in principle, there is no consensus on which provisions to amend or whether to prioritize them above bread-and-butter socioeconomic issues. Public opinion is similarly divided, but the most consistent support is for progressive priorities, such as adding new rights to privacy and the environment, rather than for conservative targets desired by the LDP, particularly Article 9.

40-YEAR BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF WAQF: ITS CURRENT STATUS AND DEVELOPMENT, AND PATHS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Waqf (Islamic endowment) has received great attention from contemporary scholars, in line with the increasing attention being paid to social welfare. However, it is conceptually unclear, with no consensus having been reached among researchers on its current status. This study provides a brief overview of recent Waqf research developments, hence paving the way for future research. The research employs a bibliometric approach to analysing and summarising the trends and status quo in Waqf growth. Only articles written in English extracted from both the Web of Science and Scopus databases were considered for the study. The paper is an attempt to establish a solid conceptual base and to suggest directions for future research. The research provides a clear picture of the growth of Waqf, and indicates research gaps by reaching comprehensive conclusions about what has been achieved in the field. It hence opens new doors for scholars to develop innovative Waqf models to bridge socioeconomic issues. Our findings show that Indonesian and Malaysian scholars and their educational institutions have had a robust research commitment to the theme of Waqf during the last forty years. However, there is a lack of research on the countries where Waqf was first practised.

From Quiet to Noisy Politics: Transformations of Swiss Business Elites’ Power

During most of the twentieth century, it was possible to consider Switzerland a coordinated market economy, characterized by dense interfirm networks and the strong role of business associations. Thanks to their cohesion and collective organization, in a context of quiet politics and informal institutions, business elites could largely self-regulate major socioeconomic issues in the shadow of politics. However, since the end of the twentieth century, Swiss business elites have undergone profound changes not only in their composition, but also in their coordinating capacity, their growing political divisions, and their connections to politics. This growing sociological and political fragmentation, combined with changes in the way of doing politics, through noisier and more formal politics, has weakened the instrumental power of Swiss business elites. To compensate for this loss of direct influence, business elites of the largest Swiss companies have developed new political strategies, relying on their growing structural power in a context of global and financial capitalism.

mSphere of Influence: No More Excuses—Addressing Race, Racism, and Socioeconomic Issues in the Science Classroom and Laboratory

ABSTRACT Pascale Guiton works in the field of parasitology at a primarily undergraduate institution. In this mSphere of Influence article, she reflects on her difficulties as a faculty of color to discuss socioscientific issues in her classrooms. T. D. Sadler’s article “Situating socio-scientific issues in classrooms as a means of achieving goals of science education” (in T. Sadler, ed., Socio-Scientific Issues in the Classroom. Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education, vol. 39, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1159-4_1, 2011) made an impact on her by providing her with a framework that allows her to effectively address matters of race, racism, and disparities in the context of science courses, bringing together her identity, her students’ experiences, and her perceived role as a scientist-educator. She urges scientist-educators to make real space in their curricula to address these issues.

Grassroots Community Collaboratives

Grassroots community initiatives can be vital to the education and stabilization of vulnerable populations experiencing problems, such as chronic disease and socioeconomic issues. A historical overview of the origins of some grassroots initiatives in the United States are explored. The potential effectiveness of grassroots initiatives used in the past and implemented in the current healthcare environment is examined for purposeful use in resolving health disparities. While, historically, there have been multiple interventions to resolve the problem of health disparities, the problem of socioeconomic and racial injustices still prevent change. Nonetheless, change is possible and can be accomplished.

Robots, labor markets, and universal basic income

Automation is a big concern in modern societies in view of its widespread impact on many socioeconomic issues including income, jobs, and productivity. While previous studies have concentrated on determining the effects on jobs and salaries, our aim is to understand how automation affects productivity, and how some policies, such as taxes on robots or universal basic income, moderate or aggravate those effects. To this end, we have designed an experiment where workers make productive effort decisions, and managers can choose between workers and robots to do these tasks. In our baseline treatment, we measure the effort made by workers who may be replaced by robots, and also elicit firm replacement decisions. Subsequently, we carry out treatments in which workers have a universal basic income of about a fifth of the workers’ median wages, or where there is a tax levy on firms who replace workers by robots. We complete the picture of the impact of automation by looking into the coexistence of workers and robots with part-time jobs. We find that the threat of a robot substitution does not affect the amount of effort exerted by workers. Also, neither universal basic income nor a tax on robots decrease workers’ effort. We observe that the robot substitution tax reduces the probability of worker substitution. Finally, workers that benefit from managerial decisions to not substitute them by more productive robots do not increase their effort level. Our conclusions shed light on the interplay of policy and workers behavior under pervasive automation.