Free composition instead of language dictatorship

Historically, programming languages have been—benevolent—dictators: reducing all possible semantics to specific ones offered by a few built-in language constructs. Over the years, some programming languages have freed the programmers from the restrictions to use only built-in libraries, built-in data types, and builtin type-checking rules. Even though—arguably—such freedom could lead to anarchy, or people shooting themselves in the foot, the contrary tends to be the case: a language that does not allow for extensibility is depriving software engineers of the ability to construct proper abstractions and to structure software in the most optimal way. Therefore the software becomes less structured and maintainable than would be possible if the software engineer could express the behavior of the program with the most appropriate abstractions. The idea proposed by this paper is to move composition from built-in language constructs to programmable, first-class abstractions in a language. We discuss several prototypes of the Co-op language, which show that it is possible, with a relatively simple model, to express a wide range of compositions as first-class concepts

Confession, Hybridity, and Language in Gina Apostol’s Gun Dealers’ Daughter

In Gun Dealers’ Daughter, Gina Apostol creates multiple tensions reflecting the relationship between the United States and the Philippines and among different linguistic codes. Languages mix throughout the text, set in the Marcos Era Philippines, as symbols of fluidity and disorientation. Other characters’ frequent complex linguistic mix proves alienating for protagonist and narrator Soledad Soliman. Apostol renders Soledad as a young girl disoriented by her inability to competently use native Filipino languages because she spent most of her childhood in the United States and simultaneously traumatized by her role as the daughter of a member of former President Ferdinand Marcos’s inner circle

Workers\u27 Resistance Against Nazi Germany at the International Labour Conference 1933

Eighty years ago, the delegation of national socialist Germany made an early exit from the International Labour Conference. An attempt to install the German Labour Front as legitimate worker representatives, instead of the free trade unions, had failed due to resistance from the Workers’ Group and, not least, the persistent silence maintained by Wilhelm Leuschner, the German unions’ representative on the ILO Governing Body. Wilhelm Leuschner was a courageous man whose actions were carefully thought through, and right from the start he was an opponent of the Nazi regime. As a resistance fighter for Germany and against Hitler, he was murdered by the Nazis in 1944. In June 1933, his participation in the International Labour Conference opened up the possibility of going into exile, but he opted instead to resist from inside Germany. That decision no doubt explains why he chose to pillory the regime by keeping silent at the International Labour Conference, rather than voicing public protests. Like so many other people in 1933, Leuschner had no idea of just how far the national socialists would later take their lust for annihilation and terror. But what was quite clear by 2 May 1933 at the latest, when the Nazis banned the free German trade unions, occupied their premises and packed countless trade unionists off to the concentration camps, was that even gestures of submission and far-reaching concessions to the Nazis would do nothing to ensure the organizational survival of trade unions that three generations of German workers had built up into one of Europe’s most powerful trade union organizations. At the same time, open political resistance in June 1933 would almost certainly have meant ill-treatment, torture and imprisonment, without in any way improving the chances of success. In this situation, Wilhelm Leuschner needed to adopt the right tactics for his appearance at the International Labour Conference, and the Workers’ Group had to ponder how it could effectively show solidarity with the German unions without exposing German trade unionists, and Wilhelm Leuschner in particular, to even greater danger. Reiner Tosstorff’s study sets out to describe and understand this complex set of circumstances. And looking beyond this concrete individual case, it still raises issues that are still relevant today

Religious Conversions and Religious Diversification in Interwar Yugoslavia and Slovenia

With the foundation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the respective nationalities and ethnic communities were faced with the reality of a multi-confessional state. Internal migration and minority policy, in particular, set in motion a slow diversification in the religious sphere, even in the ethnically and religiously extremely homogeneous territory of Slovenia. This paper aims to analyze the role that religious converts—who were largely former Catholics—played during the interwar period in Slovenian regions in the phenomenon of the gradual transformation of the religious landscape over a long period of time. Converts were an important part of almost all religious minorities: including in “traditional” religious communities, such as the German Evangelicals (i.e., Lutherans of German nationality), as much as in religious communities that were new to this region, such as the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Old Catholic Church, and the Islamic religious community, and even in small communities, including the Baptists, the Nazarenes, and others. Religious conversions, above all, marked the contemporary and historical relationships among the various religious communities in Slovenian territory, and, in a broader framework, among Yugoslav nationalities—and often given the ethnic character of these religious communities, even cross-national and interethnic relations. Despite their conflictual hypostasis, it can be argued that these changes in relationships constituted the basis for further secularization, greater heterogeneity among the congregation of the majority Catholic Church, and germs of religious plurality

Education, language and identity

The process of individual identity formation is still an enigma, as is the capacity of public bodies to intervene in it. In 1983, the Catalan education system became bilingual, and Catalan, along with Spanish, was taught in schools. Using survey data from Catalonia we show that respondents who have been exposed for a longer time period to teaching in Catalan have stronger Catalan feelings. The effect also appears to be present among individuals whose parents do not have Catalan origins; in addition the reform affects political preferences and attitudes towards the organization of the State

Liberating Composition from Language Dictatorship

Historically, programming languages have been—although benevolent—dictators: fixing a lot of semantics into built-in language constructs. Over the years, (some) programming languages have freed the programmers from restrictions to use only built-in libraries, built-in data types, or built-in type checking rules. Even though, arguably, such freedom could lead to anarchy, or people shooting themselves in the foot, the contrary tends to be the case: a language that does not allow for extensibility, is depriving software engineers from the ability to construct proper abstractions and to structure software in the most optimal way. Instead, the software becomes less structured and maintainable than would be possible if the software engineer could express the behavior of the program with the most appropriate abstractions. The new idea proposed by this paper is to move composition from built-in language constructs to programmable, first-class abstractions in the language. As an emerging result, we present the Co-op concept of a language, which shows that it is possible with a relatively simple model to express a wide range of compositions as first-class concepts

Cultural industries, nation and staten in the work of Renato Ortiz: a view from inside the Anglosphere

This short essay reflects on Renato Ortiz’s work and its reception in the Anglosphere. It then discusses the author’s meeting with Ortiz in Scotland during a European-Latin American ‘encounter’ set up to discuss cultural identity and communication. Contextual changes in the past two decades are noted and the essay moves on to consider how Ortiz addressed ‘cultural industries’ in A moderna tradição brasileira. The essay concludes by relating this perspective to the contemporary debate on the ‘creative economy’

Determinants of government consumption expenditure in developing countries : a panel data analysis

The paper focuses on the recent pattern of government consumption expenditure in developing countries and estimates the determinants which have influenced government expenditure. Using a panel data set for 111 developing countries from 1984 to 2004, this study finds evidence that political and institutional variables as well as governance variables significantly influence government expenditure. Among other results, the paper finds new evidence of Wagner's law which states that peoples' demand for service and willingness to pay is income-elastic hence the expansion of public economy is influenced by the greater economic affluence of a nation (Cameron1978). Corruption is found to be influential in explaining the public expenditure of developing countries. On the contrary, size of the economy and fractionalization are found to have significant negative association with government expenditure. In addition, the study finds evidence that public expenditure significantly shrinks under military dictatorship compared with other form of governance.Developing countries, Public expenditures, Corruption, Government expenditure, Fractionalization, Governance, Political institutions and Extreme bound analysis