1,014 research outputs found
The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of Working Spaces
This edited volume presents a compendium of emerging and innovative studies
on the proliferation of new working spaces (NeWSps), both formal and informal
(such as coworking spaces, maker spaces, fab labs, public libraries, and cofee
shops), and their role during and following the COVID-19 pandemic in urban
and regional development and planning.
This book presents an original, interdisciplinary approach to NeWSps
through three features: (i) situating the debate in the context of the COVID-19
pandemic, which has transformed NeWSp business models and the everyday
work life of their owners and users; (ii) repositioning and rethinking the debate
on NeWSps in the context of socioeconomics and planning and comparing
conditions between before and during the COVID-19 pandemic; and (iii)
providing new directions for urban and regional development and resilience to
the COVID-19 pandemic, considering new ways of working and living.
The 17 chapters are co-authored by both leading international scholars who
have studied the proliferation of NeWSps in the last decade and young, talented
researchers, resulting in a total of 55 co-authors from diferent disciplines (48 of
whom are currently involved in the COST Action CA18214 ‘The Geography
of New Working Spaces and Impact on the Periphery’ 2019–2023: www.newworking-
spaces.eu).
Selected comparative studies among several European countries (Western
and Eastern Europe) and from the US and Lebanon are presented. The book
contributes to the understanding of multi-disciplinary theoretical and practical
implications of NeWSps for our society, economy, and urban/regional planning
in conditions following the COVID-19 pandemic
PLA Logistics and Sustainment: PLA Conference 2022
The US Army War College People’s Liberation Army Conference (PLA) Conference was held March 31 to April 2, 2022, at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.
The conference focused on PLA logistics and sustainment. As the PLA continues to build and modernize its combat forces, it is important to examine if the capabilities meant to support combat operations are also being developed.
Specific topics included: 1) China’s national-level logistics, including how China mobilizes national resources for the military and how it provides joint logistics support to the PLA Theater Commands; 2) the logistics capabilities of the different PLA services, especially the Army, Navy, and Air Forces; 3) PLA logistics in China’s remote regions, such as airpower projection in the Western Theater Command along the Indian border; and, 4) the PLA’s ability to sustain overseas operations at its base in Djibouti.
Despite notable potential shortfalls and points of friction, the PLA has successfully sustained counterpiracy maritime operations for many years and conducted noncombatant evacuation operations well-distant from China. It is increasingly able to move forces across the vast distances of China and conduct large training exercises. Far more must be known about PLA sustainment and logistics before the hard questions about PLA operational reach and endurance can be answered.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1954/thumbnail.jp
The nature of work in/security: surfing precarious work in London’s contingent economy
Precarity, precariousness and precarious work have, in recent years, become central to sociological discussions of youth, employment and urban life. In existing debate, precarity is typically described in a split nature, as a form of work and a condition. Through ethnographic investigation, this thesis intimately investigates this relationship, arguing that precarious work is best thought of as a quality of all work, and precariousness needs to be re-evaluated in this light. These themes are developed using the term ‘in/security’, which draws attention to the security and insecurity inherent to the balance that precarity represents.
Empirically, this project examines the openings, challenges and strategies of those who have come to work in London’s precarious job market. Based on auto/ethnographic fieldwork and twenty interviews with denizens of the London precarious job market, the thesis argues for a condition of ‘surfing’ between jobs as a fairly consistent way of life. When people cannot find permanent work, or need work quickly, precarious jobs represent ‘fast work’ that is available with little effort. These however are rarely full jobs, but instead are conceived of in the thesis as empty places -a contingent need in the production line or service programme of the enterprise. Workers come to fill in these empty places, but routinely struggle to break out of the borders of the contingent need. As such, they are eventually let go or resign themselves without having altered their original circumstance that led them into precarious work in the first place. This leads to moving from empty place to empty place, gaining little from each. Workers may interrupt that flow with years-long stints in single jobs, or breaking out into industries with better pay or working conditions, but the surfing of precarious work can reinstate itself like a bad habit. In this recurring experience, the nature of precarity in contemporary market-driven economies like the UK is identified, achieving an equilibrium of what insecure options are available.
The core contribution of the thesis is to view precarity not as a form of work or condition but instead as a contingent equilibrium of tenure insecurity, working conditions and personal fulfilment. In being able to smooth out the insecurities of any single job, workers are able to achieve a state of working that they deem preferable to the available permanent work. In this manner precarious workers are at once caught in the pragmatic advantages of precarious work and the limitations and insecurity which comes with it. Work-induced precarity is as much supported by what little securities precarious work provides as it is by what uncertainties are introduced. This changes what questions sociologists ask of precarity. Instead of asking who is precarious or not, or what job is precarious, the question becomes who is allowed to surf and how? Furthermore, who is made to stop in a job that is, while the best they can find, otherwise unattractive? The contribution of this study then is to give texture to precarity in a manner that raises new questions while giving a sounder conceptual foundation
Operational Research: methods and applications
This is the final version. Available on open access from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this recordThroughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first summarises the up-to-date knowledge and provides an overview of the state-of-the-art methods and key developments in the various subdomains of the field. The second offers a wide-ranging list of areas where Operational Research has been applied. The article is meant to be read in a nonlinear fashion and used as a point of reference by a diverse pool of readers: academics, researchers, students, and practitioners. The entries within the methods and applications sections are presented in alphabetical order. The authors dedicate this paper to the 2023 Turkey/Syria earthquake victims. We sincerely hope that advances in OR will play a role towards minimising the pain and suffering caused by this and future catastrophes
Knowledge on the Move: Studies on Mobile Social Education
This book draws on work undertaken by colleagues involved with the Erasmus+ project called SoMoveED, or Social Education on the Move. The broader aim of the project is to develop, implement, and disseminate innovation in the form of a model of mobile social education in higher education, of which this book makes up one small part.The project draws together institutions and organizations from ten European countries (Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Turkey, and the United Kingdom), including eight universities, two non-governmental organizations and one social enterprise. Approximately 40 people are working on the project, including academic teachers and researchers, entrepreneurs, and social activists. The project’s main objective is to explore and develop ways in which the teaching process can be organized in motion, outside the university walls, with the participation of stakeholders from outside the academic community (citizens, representatives of institutions and organizations, activists, people at risk of marginalization). This model incorporates three important features into the educational process: (1) mobility; (2) participation; and (3) inclusion
Operational research:methods and applications
Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include a variety of methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a diverse and wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first aims to summarise the up-to-date knowledge and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art methods and key developments in the various subdomains of the field. The second offers a wide-ranging list of areas where Operational Research has been applied. The article is meant to be read in a nonlinear fashion. It should be used as a point of reference or first-port-of-call for a diverse pool of readers: academics, researchers, students, and practitioners. The entries within the methods and applications sections are presented in alphabetical order
Rethinking Collective Anxieties as a Genre in Post-9/11 Hollywood Movies
Dieses Buch ruft das Genre Kino der (kollektiven) Ängste ins Leben und beschreibt und analysiert dieses Genre anhand beispielhafter Fallstudien nach dem 9/11. Es liefert vielschichtige Filmanalysen zu vier Hollywood-Filmen; Crash (2004), The Brave One (2007), The Company Men (2010) und The Purge: Election Year (2016).
Diese Forschung stellt einen Versuch dar, eine abgrenzende Definition dieses Kinos als filmisches (Sub-)Genre zu konzipieren und einen Überblick über die Eigenschaften dieses Kinos zu geben, wobei besonderes Augenmerk auf post-9/11 Filme mit der Angst-Narrativ der inneren Bedrohung gelegt wird. Dieses Genre steht an der Schnittstelle ästhetischer Erkenntnisse, historischer Entwicklungen, kultureller Phänomene und politisch-ideologischer Schattierungen, was die Hybridisierung zu einem der Hauptmerkmale dieser Filmgattung macht. Diese Studie betrachtet das kollektive Angstkino nach dem 9/11 als eine Ansammlung historischer Ängste, von denen einige aus genau dieser Zeit stammen (wie der Patriot Act und die ständigen Alarmstufen Rot), während andere auf frühere Epochen der US-Geschichte zurückgehen (wie die Ankunft der ersten europäischen Siedler in einer unbekannten feindlichen Umgebung, die Hexenjagd in Salem, der Rote Schrecken, die Bürgerrechtsbewegung und die satanische Panik). Anders gesagt, das Buch untersucht die inneren Assoziationen der Filme mit einer Reihe historischer Ängste von der Gründung Amerikas bis zur Gegenwart. Darüber hinaus geht diese Studie den Echos dieser Ängste nach und beleuchtet ihre Ausdrucksformen und ihre Echos in anderen Filmen, literarischen Werken, Genres und Mythen.
Obwohl die untersuchten Ängste oft mit relativ spezifischen Problemen verbunden sind (wie Race-Ängste und Kulturkriege, Kriminalitätsängste und Waffenkultur, Wirtschaftsängste und der Finanzcrash sowie politische Ängste und Wahlparanoia), sind sie immer noch überwiegend, nach Ansicht der Autorin, das Produkt eines halben Jahrhunderts neoliberaler Politik.This book brings 'the cinema of (collective) anxieties' to life as a genre, and it describes and analyzes this genre based on exemplary post-9/11 case studies. Thus, it provides multilayered film analyses of four Hollywood movies; Crash (2004), The Brave One (2007), The Company Men (2010), and The Purge: Election Year (2016).
This research constitutes an attempt to conceptualize a demarcating definition of this cinema as a cinematic (sub)genre and to provide an outline of the traits and characteristics of this cinema while paying special attention to the cycle of post-9/11 movies depicting the fear narrative of internal threat. This genre stands at a junction of aesthetic realizations, historical developments, cultural phenomena, and political-ideological shades, which makes hybridization one of the leading features of this cinematic genre.
This study approaches the post-9/11 collective anxiety cinema as an accumulation of historical anxieties, some of which stem from this very period (such as the Patriot Act and the constant Red Alerts), while others date back to earlier eras in US history (such as the arrival of the first European settlers in an unknown hostile environment, the Salem Witch Hunt, the Red Scare, the civil rights movement, and the Satanic panic). In other words, the book explores the films' inner associations with bundles of historical anxieties from the inception of America until the current era. Furthermore, this study traces the echoes of these anxieties and highlights their forms of expression and their echoes in other movies, literary works, genres, and myths.
Although the examined anxieties are often tied to relatively specific problems (like racial anxieties and culture wars; crime anxieties and gun culture; economic anxieties and the financial crash; political anxiety and election paranoia), they are still largely, in the author's view, the product of half a century of neoliberal policies
Social art as material and process: Towards a new method and ethos for social art
This thesis presents an argument for the existence of unidentified materials utilised
by social artists, including chance and often serendipitous encounters with people,
environment, and place, which play a critical role in social art. I emphasise the need
for a new ethical-social aesthetic model founded on a more comprehensive
understanding of the materiality that comprises social art. My contribution to the field
reveals the potential of such materiality in the three new artworks and developing a
model of creative participatory approaches to art-making. By recognising this
potential of seemingly insignificant things and ephemera, I explore a new model of
aesthetics within my social art practice that influences the direction of the creative
process and, ultimately, the form of the artworks. Through a closer examination of
the nuances of social art practice, this thesis presents a fresh perspective on the
potential of social art materials.
This thesis investigates a new aesthetic in social art practice rooted in a more
productive relationship between hylomorphic and morphogenetic qualities (as
discussed by Tim Ingold, 2013). To accomplish this, I draw upon Grant Kester's
dialogical aesthetics (2004), Tim Ingold's binary approaches to making (2013), Erin
Manning's potential of minor gestures (2016), and Yuriko Saito's familiar aesthetics
(2017). To undertake this exploration, I reflect on and analyse field notes and
personal diary entries from my involvement in creating three new social artworks
(two interactive sculptures and a film) 'The Gentlemen's Wardrobe' (2016), 'Time
Machine' (2017) and '[birdsong]' (film, 2019). Additionally, I conduct participatory
observation in two internationally recognised social art projects: Rick Lowe's Project
Row Houses, Texas (1995 - ongoing) and Suzanne Lacy's ‘Shapes of Water -
Sounds of Hope’ (2016 - 17) in my local neighbourhood of Pendle, Lancashire
Industrious gentiles : Hindu merchants and middlemen in the Portuguese Estado da Índia, c.1730-1850
Defence date: 25 June 2019Examining Board:
Prof. Jorge Flores, European University Institute;
Prof. Regina Grafe, European University Institute;
Prof. Dr. Cátia Antunes, Leiden University;
Dr. Ângela Barreto Xavier, Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de LisboaThis thesis explores the role of Hindu merchants in the Portuguese Estado da Índia from 1730 to 1850 and their myriad processes of engagement with the colonial state. It seeks to understand and account for the extent to which Hindu merchants were dominant commercial and political actors in the colonial economy of the Estado, and how they became indispensable mercantile and political actors for the Portuguese colonial state in India. Although their relationship has been one characterised by 'mutual dependency', this thesis is concerned with illuminating the extent to which it was mutually reciprocal by analysing how, why, and to what effect, Hindu merchants sought to profit and derive substantial benefits from their status as Portuguese colonial subjects. The eighteenth century heralded radical alterations in the political, economic and socio-cultural landscape of Portuguese India. Thus, the impact of these structural reforms on its Hindu mercantile community and the dynamics of their responses to it will also be analysed, in order to elucidate the impact of Portuguese colonialism from the ground up. Although the commercial dominance of Hindu merchants has been widely noted, we know little of their modus operandi and the mechanisms and institutions that undergirded their trade. This thesis therefore seeks to examine the full scope of their modus operandi and the influence of family and kinship bonds in order to provide a more systematic and detailed account of their commercial success. Given the fact that the scope of their commercial network went far beyond the boundaries of the Estado, the manner in which they built, consolidated and managed a global network of crosscultural mercantile partners will also be analysed. By examining the dominance and agency of Hindu merchants, it will demonstrate the continued importance and resilience of local mercantile actors in the global economy of the Indian Ocean, adding further nuance to our understanding of the dynamics of European colonialism on the subcontinent, and the complexity of the engagement between Asian and European actors during this period
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