The Political Economy of the Wagner Act: Power, Symbol, and Workplace Cooperation

To shed light on the legal debate over new forms of workplace collaboration, this Article reexamines the origins of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Professor Barenberg concludes that the Wagner Act scheme was profoundly cooperationist, not adversarial as is conventionally assumed. Revisionist historiography shows that, contrary to the claims of public choice theorists, Senator Wagner\u27s network of political entrepreneurs was the decisive force in the conception and enactment of the new labor policy, amidst interest group paralysis and popular unrest. Drawing on original archival materials and oral histories, Professor Barenberg reconstructs the progressive ideology of Wagner and his circle. That elite network understood, consonant with recent critical theories, that legal symbols could shape worker consciousness. Their goal, however, was not to pacify but rather to galvanize workers to seek the collective empowerment that alone could secure democratic consent and cooperation in both the enterprise and in the polity in the era of mass production. Wagner rejected the leading interwar model of workplace cooperation – company unionism – because he believed it could not combine high-trust cooperation with protection of workers against instrumental and symbolic domination by employers. Unlike recent legal-economic theorists who presume a world of self-interested, rational behavior, Wagner understood that workplace hierarchies generate cultural contests over trust and resentment. Wagner\u27s model is more akin to current theories that maintain that human interests and perceptions – including dispositions toward trusting cooperation – are constituted intersubjectively and self-reflexively

In Search of Ecopolis

This book identifies the contemporary environmental crisis as a call to create a new biocentric civilisation. Proceeding from the identification of the constants of civilized life, the argument seeks to build constructive ecological models by relating Green politics to philosophy and ethics. This approach seeks to develop a practical, institution building orientation out of fundamental Green principles. In the process, the gap between the 'is' of the real world and the 'ought to be' of philosophy is closed via notions of cognitive praxis and ecological praxis. Ensuring the unity of subject and object is a way of recovering the original meaning of politics as creative human self-realisation. Eudaimonia in Aristotle and conatus in Spinoza are identified as crucial to human flourishing, identified as definitive of the good life. Reason is shown to be central to this conception of happiness and the constitution of the common good. The book criticises market society and its atomistic relations as a reversion to the lowest form of reasoning in the Prisoner's Dilemma. In relating ecological praxis to civilisation, the book calls for the extension of communicative and cooperative structures in order to foster and embed the rational restraint crucial to long term freedom for all in social relations and institutions.. The contributions of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Hegel, Marx and Habermas to this view are all emphasised

Evolution And Ethics

Does evolution inform the ancient debate about the roles that instinct (emotion/passion/sentiment/feeling) and reason do and/or should play in how we decide what to do? Evolutionary ethicists typically adopt Darwinism as a suitable explanation for evolution, and on that basis draw conclusions about moral epistemology. However, if Darwinism is to be offered as a premise from which conclusions about moral epistemology are drawn, in order to assess such arguments we must assess that premise. This reveals the highly speculative and metaphysical quality of our theoretical explanations for how evolution happens. Clarifying that helps to facilitate an assessment of the epistemological claims of evolutionary ethicists. There are four general ways that instinct and reason can function in moral deliberation: descriptive instinctivism asserts that moral deliberation is necessarily a matter of instincts because control of the instincts by our faculty of reason is regarded (descriptively) as impossible; descriptive rationalism asserts that moral deliberation is necessarily a matter of reasoning, which (descriptively) must control instinct; prescriptive instinctivism asserts that moral deliberation can involve both rationality and instinct but prescribes following our instincts; prescriptive rationalism also asserts that deliberation can be either instinctive or rational but prescribes following reason. Micheal Ruse (2012), Peter Singer (2011), and Philip Kitcher (2011) each adopt Darwinism and on that basis arrive at descriptive instinctivism, descriptive rationalism, and prescriptive instinctivism, respectively. Our current level of understanding about evolution implies that prescriptive rationalism is a more practical approach to ethical deliberation than the other three alternatives described. Evolution can inform moral epistemology, but only very generally by helping to inform us of what we can justifiably believe about ourselves and nature

Automated Service Negotiation Between Autonomous Computational Agents

PhDMulti-agent systems are a new computational approach for solving real world, dynamic and open system problems. Problems are conceptualized as a collection of decentralised autonomous agents that collaborate to reach the overall solution. Because of the agents autonomy, their limited rationality, and the distributed nature of most real world problems, the key issue in multi-agent system research is how to model interactions between agents. Negotiation models have emerged as suitable candidates to solve this interaction problem due to their decentralised nature, emphasis on mutual selection of an action, and the prevalence of negotiation in real social systems. The central problem addressed in this thesis is the design and engineering of a negotiation model for autonomous agents for sharing tasks and/or resources. To solve this problem a negotiation protocol and a set of deliberation mechanisms are presented which together coordinate the actions of a multiple agent system. In more detail, the negotiation protocol constrains the action selection problem solving of the agents through the use of normative rules of interaction. These rules temporally order, according to the agents' roles, communication utterances by specifying both who can say what, as well as when. Specifically, the presented protocol is a repeated, sequential model where offers are iteratively exchanged. Under this protocol, agents are assumed to be fully committed to their utterances and utterances are private between the two agents. The protocol is distributed, symmetric, supports bi and/or multi-agent negotiation as well as distributive and integrative negotiation. In addition to coordinating the agent interactions through normative rules, a set of mechanisms are presented that coordinate the deliberation process of the agents during the ongoing negotiation. Whereas the protocol normatively describes the orderings of actions, the mechanisms describe the possible set of agent strategies in using the protocol. These strategies are captured by a negotiation architecture that is composed of responsive and deliberative decision mechanisms. Decision making with the former mechanism is based on a linear combination of simple functions called tactics, which manipulate the utility of deals. The latter mechanisms are subdivided into trade-off and issue manipulation mechanisms. The trade-off mechanism generates offers that manipulate the value, rather than the overall utility, of the offer. The issue manipulation mechanism aims to increase the likelihood of an agreement by adding and removing issues into the negotiation set. When taken together, these mechanisms represent a continuum of possible decision making capabilities: ranging from behaviours that exhibit greater awareness of environmental resources and less to solution quality, to behaviours that attempt to acquire a given solution quality independently of the resource consumption. The protocol and mechanisms are empirically evaluated and have been applied to real world task distribution problems in the domains of business process management and telecommunication management. The main contribution and novelty of this research are: i) a domain independent computational model of negotiation that agents can use to support a wide variety of decision making strategies, ii) an empirical evaluation of the negotiation model for a given agent architecture in a number of different negotiation environments, and iii) the application of the developed model to a number of target domains. An increased strategy set is needed because the developed protocol is less restrictive and less constrained than the traditional ones, thus supporting development of strategic interaction models that belong more to open systems. Furthermore, because of the combination of the large number of environmental possibilities and the size of the set of possible strategies, the model has been empirically investigated to evaluate the success of strategies in different environments. These experiments have facilitated the development of general guidelines that can be used by designers interested in developing strategic negotiating agents. The developed model is grounded from the requirement considerations from both the business process management and telecommunication application domains. It has also been successfully applied to five other real world scenarios

Integrated Water Resources Management: A Theoretical Exploration of the Implementation Gap Between the Developed and Developing Worlds

As part of its Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations acknowledges that solving the world\u27s water woes requires giving one billion additional people access to safe and affordable drinking water, while also noting that this is a difficult goal to achieve considering present environmental challenges. Amidst this atmosphere of vanishing freshwater, the legislative policy community has begun to encourage diverse discourse on the topic of efficient resource management, but the form and function of such a solution present unique political and theoretical challenges for policymakers and scholars alike. The current consensus among water managers is that a multifaceted policy framework known as Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is the most viable strategy for conserving freshwater resources, and as such, it provides a proactive solution for mitigating future bouts of water scarcity. There is a puzzling disparity in IWRM implementation, however, as developed states have experienced more success with the policy than states within the developing world. IWRM\u27s policy framework establishes a set of concrete goals for water use, including effective demand management, the encouragement of a water-oriented civil society, transparency in the policy creation process, conflict resolution guidelines regarding regional and international water issues, equitable access to water resources, the decentralization of water policy, and the privatization of water provision. Drawing from scholarship on the efficacy of spontaneous, negotiated, and imposed environmental policy regimes, this thesis considers the German, Indian, Canadian, and South African IWRM implementation experiences from the perspectives of the theoretical literatures on regimes, common-pool resources/public goods, privatization, and constructivist arguments about the development and diffusion of transnational human rights norms. While all the literatures prove useful at explaining various facets of the implementation puzzle, it is the scholarship on regimes that offers the most robust explanation of the problem at hand by highlighting the importance of a linear sequence of environmental regime creation, the integration of both decentralized and centralized water governance mechanisms, and the extant character of a region\u27s previous water management regimes as central components that help to explain disparate levels of IWRM implementation success

The Coming Ecological Revolution: The Principles and Politics of a Social and Moral Ecology

Part 1 The Emerging Ecological Consciousness The environmental crisis is considered to be the product of a wider system failure. The emergence of an ecological consciousness is shown to be part of the process of revolutionizing society, restructuring power, changing culture and emphasising the quality of individual lives over the quantity of material accumulation and possession. Part 2 The Coming Revolution in Economic Thought The environmental crisis is related to the crisis in economic thought and practice. The crisis in vision in economics is related to the economic system in general. Part 3 Society as a Learning Mechanism Notions of knowledge and social transformation need to be reworked to take account of genuine change as a process rather than as event. This part is organised around concerns for community, communication and the common good. Part 4 Political Philosophy and Ethics This part examines the emancipatory potentialities of reason and freedom to constitute the good life for human beings. The argument considers politics as creative human self-realisation to possess an ineliminable normative dimension concerning the appropriate regiment for the good. Part 5 Ecological Praxis This part goes from principles to practice to examine how the emerging ecological consciousness can be embedded in social practices and institutions. This is a question not only of how the ecological society can be created, but governed and made to work. Part 6 Environmentalism as Politics This part argues that realising the potential for a new ecological modus vivendi requires a new set of political practices and institutions. This part pays particular attention to the notion of community self-regulation. To keep the above and the below in an interactive, organic fusion means going back to the grassroots and tapping into the social and human and natural roots that feed a genuinely Green politics

You Can\u27t Get There from Here: Movement SF and the Picaresque

This dissertation examines the crisis of authenticity in postmodern culture and argues that contemporary science fiction, specifically the subgenre of Movement SF, has evolved a unique answer to this crisis by adopting, perhaps spontaneously, the picaresque narrative structure. Postmodern fiction has a tenuous relationship with the issue of authenticity, such that the average postmodern subject is utterly without true authenticity at all, alternately victim to the socioeconomic conditions of his or her culture and to the elision of the self as a result of the homogenizing effects of advertising, television, etc. Postmodern SF also carries this bleak perception of the possibility of agency; William Gibson\u27s Sprawl and Bridge trilogies are rife with negations of human agency at the metaphorical hands of various aspects and incarnations of what Fredric Jameson terms the technological sublime. This dissertation puts forth the argument that a group of post-Eighties SF texts all participate in a spontaneous revival of the picaresque mode, using the picaresque journey and related motifs to re-authenticate subjects whose identity and agency are being erased by powerful social and economic forces exterior to and normally imperceptible by the individual. This dissertation is organized around three loosely connected parts. Part 1 attempts to define Movement SF by separating the various, often confusing marketing labels (such as cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, etc.) and extracting a cluster of core characteristics that have shaped the genre since its inception in the early 80s. Part 1 further examines how these core characteristics (or premises) of Movement SF provide fertile ground for picaresque narrative strategies. Part 2 describes in detail the picaresque as it appears in Movement SF, examining worldbuilding strategies, the persistence and evolution of tropes and motifs common to the traditional picaresque, and the generation of new tropes and motifs unique to Movement picaresques. Part 3 examines the spatial tactics used in Movement picaresque narratives to enable picaresque marginality in totalized, globalized environments. Furthermore, Part 3 examines the use of psychological plurality as an internal tactic to escape closed environments

Transdisciplinary Literature Reviews and Research-based Practice for Designing an Original Novella and Original Prisoner’s Dilemma Model with an Ending to Criminal Motivations and the Selfish Binary

This original Creative Writing transdisciplinary hybrid exegesis-thesis ('thesis') and study, was produced as content for developing a highly original science fiction novella that critically 'deluminates' the Prisoner’s Dilemma and Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma models (the 'PD models') and legal system assumptions. Research structures, processes and techniques relevant to this researcher’s research questions are thoroughly investigated. Structural transdisciplinary inquiry and disciplinary literature review methods are deconstructed and applied. The Research-based Practice research and literature review method developed herein, is a highly portable and creative method applicable to traditional research frameworks, enabled the researcher to incorporate divergent knowledges and creatively fuse them within a transdisciplinary framework. The knowledge produced critically deluminates the PD models. Research-based Practice is built upon the researcher’s grounded theory derivation of Aristotle Knowledge Development Theory, and likewise, Practice Research Theory. Examining the PD models through broad and specific knowledge angles and differing research lenses enabled the researcher to deconstruct them and their real life contributions for the purposes of examining their broader implications in an original novella 'factoring' the PD models, an original PD model and this original thesis content. Creative writing disciplinary ('Creative Writing') researchers are found to contribute towards multiple disciplinary debates. They efficiently apply multiple disciplinary research in creative texts examining the broad implications of a change in society, effectively testing the strengths and weakness of existing research and their own research. Creative Writing researchers expressly or impliedly examine solutions to problems. 'Knowing', mediated through knowledge, multi-sensory data and their embodiment, is the highest and most fundamental form of knowledge used by Creative Writing researchers and claimed by the researcher and applies across all research products. Four Creative Writing researchers’ works are explored. They are found to varying degrees to reject real-life legal system models and assumptions, and two explicitly reject the PD models’ assumptions. No new legal system model was proposed, however. This researcher goes further by applying knowledge generated in this original thesis to develop an original 'legal system' PD model, the cultural impact of which is efficiently explored in the novella. This researcher finds terminal flaws existing with the PD models’ binary legal system and real-life assumptions. The PD models contain selfish binary parties and strongly motivate a 'tough-on-crime' legal culture towards 'alleged' offenders and grossly affect, limit and dispense with crucial real-life decision-making information. The PD models press towards imprisonment! The psychology applied in the PD models, the payoffs and prison focus are found to be examples of economic violence and includes workplace violence. The emphasis on interrogation confessions has resulted in the PD models’ imprisonment focus and is found to motivate 'cultures of imprisonment', trauma and suffering as evidenced in the PD models’ symbols. The PD models’ motivations are shown to result in younger people making false confessions, being wrongfully convicted and experiencing fatal retributions. The PD interrogations and prison motivations result in significant justice and workforce participation costs, increase civil unrest and increase crime. Notwithstanding these finding, the researcher considers it necessary to create an original new PD model due to the potential benefits of positive 'economic morality'. These findings had profound implications for the researcher’s development of the original novella. This study highlights that not only mathematical modellers, but also science fiction and crime writers should engage with and reflect on multiple disciplinary knowledges and expertise prior to forming mathematical or creative writing models. In addition, mathematicians and writers should engage with non-binary theory and narratives to limit binary harms. This research adds to Creative Writing research regarding non-linear geometric writing through the development of a new formulaic, 2-dimensional geometric and narrative original PD model, designed for real-world applications especially eradicating or reducing crime. The original novella, PD model and thesis hold the potential to eliminate or reduce binary thinking and harms. The PD models, and a cultural shift towards the non-binary original PD model, are explored in the novella’s cultural world. The shift from a binary to a new complex non-binary society is addressed through the original PD model’s 'overbearing influences' factors. Other binary thinking is identified and explored in the novella, including within the sciences for science fiction purposes. The researcher found it necessary to conduct 'science fiction' research experiments and found key Einstein and Darwin theories contained 'harmful myths' of reality. Binary mythologies evident across society, including structural, social and religious binaries, are investigated in the original novella. Mythologised cultural binaries are fundamentally deconstructed by the researcher, which has the effect of dramatically improving human experience of 'society'

MANAGING COMMUNITY: A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF PRAXIS

If communities are to become a viable means of implementing social policy then community practitioners must individually examine their personal praxis. Therefore, in discovering a community's aims and objectives, a management model is needed that offers every practitioner a reflexive means of understanding peoples' beliefs, values, and attitudes. This proposition is critically examined through a philosophical framework that explores individuals' diverse perspectives on community, derived from their adherence to contending ontological and epistemological propositions about the social world, and its related ethical and motivational dimensions. Following a philosophical analysis, the taxonomy of social reality perspectives, developed by Dixon (2003) and Dixon and Dogan (2002; 2003a, b, c, d; 2004). is systematically used to explore the contending views on social reality. Thus, methodological configurations are associated with logical categories, (1) naturalist agency, underpinning the self-interested (free-riding) homo economicus\ (2) naturalist structuralism, underpinning the obligation driven homo hierarchus; (3) hermeneutic structuralism, underpinning the conversation-saturated homo sociologicus (Archer, 2000: 4); and (4) hermeneutic agency, underpinning homo existentialis. The disciplines of social psychology, ethics, and political science are employed to explore selected facets of human nature, moral principles, and political ideology chosen, by associates of each set of methodological configurations, in particular relational situations. Informed by this investigation a sample of community practitioners were questioned about their praxis. This reveals that a substantial majority understand and accept an objective and knowable social worid where people are self-interested. Therefore, these practitioners perceive community as a setting where they can influence the decisions of others through discourse and judge its ethical merits by the degree of loyalty and obligation extended to their projects. Thus, it is apparent that community practitioners should evaluate their praxis, through critical self-reflection, if they are to develop suitably robust and durable symbiotic relationships with adherents to each of the four social reality perceptions. This research leads to a new logic, based on the innovative interpretation of ontotogical and epistemotogical configurations offered in the seminal work of Bhaskar (1978 and 1979) and Archer (1989, 1995, 2000 and 2003). Here, an emerging social ontology informs the construction of more specific theories conceming the dynamics of community in identifiable localities. Therefore, it now becomes possible to construct a management model, incorporating contending social realities, the techniques of mediation and the results of changing cognition and cognitive dissonance, that facilitates community practitioner's critical self-reflection and construction of managerial strategies based on community member's contending perceptions of social reality