The End of Pax Americana

In The End of Pax Americana, Naoki Sakai focuses on U.S. hegemony's long history in East Asia and the effects of its decline on contemporary conceptions of internationality. Engaging with themes of nationality in conjunction with internationality, the civilizational construction of differences between East and West, and empire and decolonization, Sakai focuses on the formation of a nationalism of hikikomori, or “reclusive withdrawal”—Japan’s increasingly inward-looking tendency since the late 1990s, named for the phenomenon of the nation’s young people sequestering themselves from public life. Sakai argues that the exhaustion of Pax Americana and the post--World War II international order—under which Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and China experienced rapid modernization through consumer capitalism and a media revolution—signals neither the “decline of the West” nor the rise of the East, but, rather a dislocation and decentering of European and North American political, economic, diplomatic, and intellectual influence. This decentering is symbolized by the sense of the loss of old colonial empires such as those of Japan, Britain, and the United States.

Who’s talking to whom in agribusiness? And should anyone listen? The network of intellectual influence in agribusiness research

PurposeTo develop an understanding of communication among agribusiness journals and to examine patterns of citations that allow the measurement and description of the structure of communication flows among those journals in a network.Design/methodology/approachThe data for this study were gathered from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published by Thomson Scientific (Philadelphia). The authors conducted a bibliometric analysis, based on an international trade analogy to explain the network of agribusiness journals and how these journals communicate with business and economics journals.FindingsBusiness and economics journals and, particularly the traditionally major ones, surprisingly were scarcely every used. However, the British Food Journal stood out with 50 citations to marketing and strategic management journals.Research limitations/implicationsThere are predominantly four such limitations: only 33 journals were studied, only one 5-year time period was involved, that time period is a few years old and the journal characteristics were derived using data from the “Scopes” and “Information for Authors” text on the website of each journal.Practical implicationsExchanges of agribusiness knowledge and information among diverse stakeholders (consumers, suppliers and public agencies) in a complex environment require a better understanding of the network of agribusiness journals and their relation to traditional business and economics journals.Social implicationsNetworks of journals facilitate cooperation and interactions to improve developments in the field.Originality/valueExamining citations from and to the field of agribusiness is interesting and important because knowledge is transferred through networks comprise those who contribute to journals, read them and learn from them, i.e. by “talking” to each other as well as by practitioners who also read and learn from those journals.

Anticipating Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the state of nature in the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” by Madame de Graffigny (1747)

The article deals with the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” (Lettres d'une Péruvienne, 1747) by Madame de Graffigny, which anticipates many ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, including the notion of state of nature. The main character, a young Peruvian woman, who was taken away to France, embodies the concept of the ‟noble savage”. Unlike civilised Europeans she has high moral qualities, critically evaluates the institutions and customs of her time, and she aspires to the state of nature, though knowledge about this world did not make her happy. Madame de Graffigny uses the Peruvian theme according to the general interest in the age of Enlightenment in the Inca Empire, which was considered as idyllic society, organised under the laws of nature. She tries, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to display merits of savages and demerits of civilised Europeans. The intellectual influence of Madame de Graffigny and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on each other is confirmed by their personal contacts. As a result, we claim that the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” was influenced by advanced philosophical ideas of the mid-18thcentury – this text stands at the origins of the concept of the ‟state of nature”, which eventually became one of the main terms of Rousseauism.

The Influence of K. Bücher – E. Meyer Controversy on Russian (Soviet) Historical Thought 1890–1920s

The article is devoted to the influence of the polemics of E. Meyer and K. Bücher on Russian (Soviet) historians and economists in the 1890–1920s. It has been established that in the pre-revolutionary period of the development of Russian historical thought, Bucher's ideas about the steady progress of the economy and society had less influence on it than Meyer's ideas about the cyclical development of the historical process. It is shown that, despite the political views of their creators, the concepts of Bucher and Meyer were popular among Russian Marxists in the pre-revolutionary period. It was noted that this was due to the fact that many Russian Social Democrats perceived Marxism as a scientific methodology open to the integration of new scientific concepts, and not as a dogmatized singular correct teaching. It is shown that the ideas of Bücher and Meyer had a significant impact on Soviet historical thought in the 1920s. It is concluded that this influence is explained by the preservation of certain elements of pre-revolutionary social democratic thought in it and its organic inclusion in the European intellectual space of the first third of the 20th century. It is noted that ideological self-isolation and the subsequent formation of the Marxist canon in the 1930s led to a weakening of the intellectual influence of modern European thought on Soviet historical science.

The Vehiculum Dei

Chapter 6 explores the influence of the scholarly community circulating Ragley Hall—most notably, Henry More, Anne Conway, and Francis Mercury van Helmont—on Quaker Christology. This group were influenced by Kabbalist ideas, and introduced the notion of a ‘middle substance’ into Quakers’ understanding of the ‘inward Christ’. This intellectual influence was immortalized in Robert Barclay’s Apology, and is most prominent in his account of the ‘vehiculum Dei’. While George Keith claimed to have given Barclay his ideas as expressed in the Apology, this chapter argues that Barclay was engaging with the Ragley Hall group directly during this period. That such an important contribution towards the Quakers’ understanding of Christ’s body was produced out of conversations regarding the most pressing philosophical issues of the day demonstrates strikingly how the development of Quaker theology was guided directly by wider intellectual trends of the seventeenth century

Upaya Meningkatkan Kinerja Organisasi Melalui Intelektual Kapital dan Budaya Belajar (Studi Empirik di Universitas Yarsi)

ABSTRAKPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh intelektual kapital terhadap budaya belajar dan kinerja organisasi serta budaya belajar terhadap kinerja organisasi. Selain itu penelitian ini juga untuk mengetahui apakah budaya belajar memediasi pengaruh intelektual kapital terhadap kinerja organisasi. Populasi penelitian ini adalah dosen tetap Universitas YARSI. Penelitian dilakukan dengan metode survey dengan menyebarkan kuesioner kepada 60 dosen di lingkungan Universitas YARSI. Alat analisis yang dipergunakan adalah path analysis. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa intelektual kapital berpengaruh positif dan signifikan terhadap budaya belajar dan kinerja organisasi, budaya belajar berpengaruh positif dan signifikan terhadap kinerja organisasi. Hasil penelitian juga menunjukkan bahwa budaya belajar memediasi pengaruh inteletual kapital terhadap kinerja organisasi di Universtas YARSI. Kata kunci : Intelektual Kapital, Budaya Belajar, Kinerja Organisasi, Universitas YARSI ABSTRACTThis study aims to determine the intellectual influence of capital on learning culture and organizational performance and learning culture on organizational performance. Besides this research is also to find out whether learning culture mediates the intellectual influence of capital on organizational performance. The population of this research is YARSI University permanent lecturer. The study was conducted by survey method by distributing questionnaires to 60 lecturers at YARSI University. The analytical tool used is path analysis. The results showed that intellectual capital had a positive and significant effect on learning culture and organizational performance, learning culture had a positive and significant effect on organizational performance. The results also showed that the culture of learning mediated the intellectual influence of capital on organizational performance at YARSI University.Keywords: Intellectual Capital, Culture of learning, Organizational Performance, YARSI University

Why read Reinhold Niebuhr now?

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) is perhaps the best known North American theologian of the twentieth century. Over the course of his life he was a Christian socialist, pacifist, a staunch anti-communist, and an architect of vital-centre liberalism. Niebuhr wrote on themes as diverse as war, democracy, world order, political economy and race. So significant was Niebuhr’s intellectual influence that George Kennan once described him as ‘the father of us all’. Indeed, from the thought of Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, Martin Luther King Jr. to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Hans Morgenthau to Kenneth Waltz, E.H. Carr to Jean Bethke Elshtain, Niebuhr has helped shape International Relations. Bringing together intellectual historians and international political theorists, this special issue asks whether Niebuhr’s thought remains relevant to our times? Can he help us think about democracy, power, race, the use of force, and cruelty in a moment when ethnonationalism appears ascendant and democracy in decline?

The labor-managed firm, Jaroslav Vanek and me

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to summarize the relationship between the research of Jaroslav Vanek on labor-managed firms (LMFs) and the research of Gregory K. Dow on the same topic.Design/methodology/approachThe article reviews the research of Jaroslav Vanek in the 1970s and explains how this influenced the publications of Gregory K. Dow extending from the 1980s to the present. A particular focus involves Dow's book “The Labor-Managed Firm: Theoretical Foundations” published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. The methodology is to present an intellectual history in narrative form. The scope of the paper is the economic theory of the LMF.FindingsThe article finds that Dow's interest in LMFs was stimulated by Vanek's publications from the early 1970s. However, Dow's publications in the 1980s were motivated to a large degree by efforts to overcome the limitations of Vanek's theory of the LMF, a goal that shaped much of Dow's later research in the field.Originality/valueThe paper illuminates the strong intellectual influence Jaroslav Vanek exerted on the economic theory of the LMF. Readers who want information about the influences on Dow's work may also find it useful.

Goethe as Philosopher

This chapter explores the only apparent contradiction between Goethe’s profession of a lack of talent for philosophy and the significant reciprocal intellectual influence that existed between Goethe and leading philosophers of his time, including Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling. The essay traces the development of Goethe’s interest in philosophy in the years preceding the publication of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship as he pursues the possibility of some form of “intuitive” (nondiscursive) understanding. This path appears to have grown especially at the start from Goethe’s interest in botany and in Spinoza’s notion of a scientia intuitiva. The full shape of Goethe’s reflections on this issue ultimately involve his engagement with Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment as well as with a set of reflections on how one might be able to construe a “complete series” of developmental transitions.