Creative Transformation and the Knowledge-Based Economy: Intellectual Property and Access to Knowledge under Informational Capitalism

This dissertation contributes to critiques of informational capitalism by analyzing the role intellectual property (IP) law plays in the appropriation and commodification of knowledge. Using an interdisciplinary framework rooted in the critical political economy of communication and critical legal studies, this dissertation focuses on how IP law is used to appropriate knowledge as a commodity and support accumulation in a so-called knowledge-based economy, better understood as informational capitalism. Informational capitalism is legitimated by neoliberal, libertarian, and technologically-determinist beliefs, which I demonstrate to be fallacies that support political economic concentrations and inequitable processes of commodification, spatialization, and structuration. International organizations and governance regimes, such as the international trade-based IP system, diffuse these beliefs and thereby legitimize practices that remove knowledge and information from their social contexts. This dissertation propounds the use of a knowledge/information dialectic to highlight the mutually constitutive relationship between knowledge-based resources and informational assets. As I demonstrate, digital and peer-based production alternatives challenge IP law by highlighting the socio-cultural aspects of knowledge/information necessary for commodification to occur. Such alternatives represent an emerging informational politics responding to the inequities of informational capitalism. Using Karl Polanyis double movement thesis, I focus on alternative practices of knowledge production and management as counter-movements to IP seeking to support a greater variety of socio-cultural concerns and more equitable political economic structurations. In particular, through a critical analysis of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) Movement (an umbrella term covering various civil society and non-Western approaches to IP), I demonstrate how informational politics simultaneously resist and extend the economically reductionist and technologically determinist fallacies they purport to oppose. By tracing the emergence of the concept of A2K and performing a critical discourse analysis of key primary and secondary Movement texts, I show it to be a counter-movement that concurrently opposes and reinforces key neoliberal, libertarian, and technologically-determinist assumptions. I conclude that human rights-based discourses and human capability approaches to development provide alternative normative frameworks that oppositional movements might use to address the political economic inequities posed by IP-based informational capitalism

China’s Private-Owned Enterprises Economic Performance, Political Action & Fiscal Consequence

For most transition countries who want to transfer to a market-oriented system from the planned-economy, one of the most important features is to shrink the state-owned enterprises (SOE) and expand the private-owned enterprises(POE), such as had been experienced by the former Soviet Union and the socialist countries in Eastern Europe. The same thing is happening in China. Since China started reform and opening to the outside world in 1979, Private-Owned Enterprises (POE) have grown dramatically and become a significant contributor to China’s economic growth. This paper describes firstly this great economic achievement, and then emphasizes its political consequences. The main conclusions are as follows: the prolonged prosperity of POE in China over two decades proved again that private property rights always generate higher efficiency than the public ownership system in which owners are ambiguous or unspecified. The great improvement of POE’s political status comes from both the state’s rational compromise and the POE’s positive participation due to the pressure of economic development on the government side and the security needs for property and human rights on the POE side. Overall, the political participation by POE is helpful to improve the democratic process of governmental decision making, which has been demonstrated both at local governmental levels and with budgetary issues. However, the risks of collusion between money and power call for formal institutional mechanisms which let all people express and protect their interests transparently and legally

Sociology - Bulgaria

Analysis of the pre-1989 situation; Redefinition of the discipline since 1990; Core theoretical and methodological orientations; Thematic orientation and funding; Public space and academic debates; Views on further development

Property Rights as a Precondition to Development: A Case Study of Jamaica

Emerging research suggests that property rights play a significant role in the economic and social development of nations. To test this proposition, this study examines the case of Jamaica and whether there is a relationship between property rights and development. In order to carry out this investigation, this study gathers and analyzes existing research to: 1. define the extent that Jamaicans lack property rights and how this affects their everyday quality of life and vulnerability to poverty; 2. examine the relationship between the absence of property rights and underdevelopment; and 3. explore how the current international and local Jamaican policy environment is positioned to address an absence of property rights. This research confirms that there is a significant proportion of Jamaicans who do not have access to property rights, that this is related to social and economic underdevelopment, and that the international and local policy environment does not sufficiently address the absence of property rights. As demonstrated by the case of Jamaica, development approaches and Government of Jamaica policy may need to be adjusted to include property rights. This research involves four stages. Chapter Two provides an overview of the literature related to the study of property rights and development. Chapter Three estimates the extent of the absence of property rights in Jamaica and elaborates how this affects everyday quality of life regarding housing, work, security, and public infrastructure. Chapter Four explores the connection between Jamaica\u27s lack of property rights and underdevelopment. Chapter Five examines the international and local policy environment to better understand the official response to the absence of property rights. Finally, the research concludes with policy recommendations for the Government of Jamaica, to establish a task force charged with property rights reform, to transform the political patronage system, and to creatively seek resources, funding and partnerships from donor nations and organizations

Human capital, foreign aid and poverty reduction strategy in Chad

Poverty is a worldwide phenomenon that affects continents, countries, and people differently in both urban and rural areas. Although the International Development Assistance (IDA) or also known as foreign aid (FA) has been supporting poverty reduction around the world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries for more than five decades. However, the issues of poverty remained unsolved in many poor nations. Therefore, this study investigated the mediating role of foreign aid in the relationship between human capital (i.e., education, health, and vocational training) and poverty reduction in Chad. Thus, the human capital theory was integrated as the underpinning theory to support the fundamental conceptual framework of the study. As such, a mixed methods design (qualitative and quantitative) was used including secondary data collected from the World Bank to confirm the findings from both analyses. A total of 354 survey questionnaires were collected from the community leaders, members of independent associations and non-governmental organizations (NGO) representatives in Chad and therefore, time series data gathered from the World Bank database from 1991 to 2019. Therefore, the results from the semi-structured interviews (qualitative) showed that poverty reduction strategy in Chad is insufficient and unsatisfactory. In addition, participants agreed that education, health and vocational training strongly influence the poverty reduction strategy. The quantitative analysis from the secondary data revealed that only vocational training positively correlates with poverty reduction. However, health and education indicate a significant negative relationship with poverty reduction. Furthermore, the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis on the other hand revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between education, vocational training and poverty reduction in Chad. Also, the results indicated that foreign aid mediates the relationship between education, vocational training and poverty reduction. But health has shown a negative effect on poverty reduction directly and indirectly through foreign aid. The study has confirmed that human capital indicators play a vital role in reducing poverty and therefore, foreign aid plays a role that not to be neglected in poverty reduction in Chad. Thus, it is recommended that Chadian government to enhance more on the management of the foreign aid given to the health sector by evaluating the impact of the aids after the execution process. Through this, poverty reduction can be improved, leading to a positive and significant effect on overall poverty reduction plan in Chad. Also, the results add to the existing literature by incorporating variables that might improve poverty reduction. The research also addressed the implication of practices and future research

La morfología de las urban village en la era de la datificación. El ejemplo de Xiasha Village the Shenzhen

Actualmente, los procesos acelerados de urbanización y ocupación del suelo se han convertido en un fenómeno mundial. El crecimiento de las ciudades ha promovido el progreso de la sociedad, pero también ha producido numerosos problemas. En China, la revitalización de las aldeas urbanas (urban village) consecuencia de los procesos de urbanización necesitan encontrar soluciones urgentemente. En la era de Internet, la revolución de los datos nos proporciona información básica, objetiva, instantánea y dinámica. Toda ella puede ser de gran ayuda para estudiar este problema. En este trabajo primero se aborda una introducción y contextualización a la definición de los urban village chinos, y se estudia la historia de las urban village de Shenzhen. Después, se aborda un análisis a escala macroscópico, mesoscópico y microscópico, tratando de sacar partido a los datos disponibles que caracterizan el funcionamiento de dichas villages para hacer una investigación sobre la forma urbana espacial de las aldeas urbanas de Shenzhen. Finalmente, según los resultados del estudio, se proporciona la estrategia de revitalización de los urban village.Currently, urbanization has become a global phenomenon. It pushes the human society to go forward, but meanwhile has produced numerous social problems. In China, the urban village revitalization coming with urbanization needs to be solved urgently. In the internet era, the generous data provides all-sided, objective, instant and dynamic basic data. They can help us to study this problem. This paper firstly explains the definition of Chinese urban villages, and studies the history of Shenzhen¿s urban villages. And then, from the macroscopic, mesoscopic and microscopic levels, using different tools and other new data to make a research on urban spatial form (morphology) of Shenzhen¿s urban villages. Finally, according to the results of the study, the revitalization strategy of urban villages is provided.Chen, W. (2017). La morfología de las urban village en la era de la datificación. El ejemplo de Xiasha Village the Shenzhen. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/113663TFG

Sexual Knowledge in Late-Colonial Bombay: Contested Authority, Politicized Sciences

Sexuality was at the fulcrum of various issues facing late-colonial India from social reform projects such as child marriage, women’s rights and birth control to concerns of socioeconomic, physical and sexual weakening. The question of sexual modernity became implicated in imaginations of the modern post-colonial nation, setting the stage for a period of energized, linguistically plural projects of sexual knowledge production. While science was used to authorize such projects in the West, where could authority be located in a context where science held plural meaning and authority itself was highly contested? This paper asks how scientific authority was understood, deployed and shaped by the eugenics project of Narayan Sitaram Phadke (1894-1978) and the sexology project of A.P. Pillay (1890-1956). This thesis argues that the mechanics of each figures’ utilization of science captures how the interaction between scientific authority and society was understood by Phadke and Pillay in different ways. While both figures subscribed to the idea that science was universally authoritative in the making of sexual modernity, Phadke’s and Pillay’s projects show the plurality in how science was understood by social reformers. Furthermore, the thesis presents the differences between Phadke’s and Pillay’s projects as a product of the larger movements – British-era birth control advocacy, Hindu nationalism, upper-caste marriage reform and global sexology – that Phadke and Pillay were distinctly invested in or separated from. Scientific authority and the mechanics of its use is proposed as a vivid lens into the complex dynamics of modernization in late-colonial India

A Geology of the General Intellect

We can no longer be certain whether the central terms and conceptual matrix that the Italian Autonomist Marxist tradition richly develops and draws on--the common, the general intellect, immaterial labour, psychopolitics, cognitariat--are able to survive unscathed the theoretical problems that the epoch of the Anthropocene poses. In an attempt to push this conceptual matrix to its political and ontological limits, I expose a series of “ecological deficits” at the core of Autonomist thought and make the argument that semiocapitalism is a geological operator just as much it is a cognitive, financial or linguistic one. This has a plethora of paradoxical implications that are constellated throughout the three chapters. The first chapter explores the non-mediatic conditions of possibility behind “mediation”: following Jussi Parikka and Matteo Pasquinelli, the first “ecological deficit” emerges due to conflating the mediasphere with the subjective operations of the “sign” (semiotic flows of labour, knowledge, information) and “desire” (creative flows, libidinal energy, affects) as well as over-valuing the “general intellect” (the productive powers of the social brain) and its exclusive relation to the infosphere (knowledge transmission, big data, linguistic networks of communication), the cognitariat (social subjectivity, value-producing labour) and the technosphere (machines, fixed capital). The second chapter critiques Antonio Negri’s ontological theory of value: following Silvia Federici and Jason W. Moore, the second “ecological deficit” emerges due to Autonomism’s negligence of socially necessary unpaid work, non-human relations of reproduction and cheap nature that make possible value-producing labour; this chapter also, following Bernard Stiegler, critiques an ontology of the sign that privileges expressionism (immaterial semiotic productivity, meaning and epistemics) over impressionism (retentional systems of incarnation, reproduction and energetics). The third chapter develops a critique of representational eco-politics or the spectacular Anthropocene: following Jean Baudrillard and Yves Citton, the final “ecological deficit” emerges due to the hyperplasia of images, data and simulacra of the Anthropocene itself, whereby the referent is spectralized by the luminescent aura of the sign, resulting in complicated forms of irrelevance, boredom and attentional scarcities. Each chapter in its own way develops the speculative leitmotif of a “transcendental geology --i.e. the claim that the earth is a condition of possibility for thought