Keynes and Economics: The Early Stage

The following pages offer a contribution to the understanding of Keynes’s débuts as an economist, in the hope we might dissipate a few myths, some created by Keynes himself, others by disciples or adversaries. Following some preliminary remarks on these misunderstandings, we will recall how Keynes became a professional economist, showing that he did not arrive to economics by chance, that this was indeed a natural result of his early preoccupations and thinking. But, even when he was a confirmed economist, economics remained secondary for Keynes, after ethics and politics, and this until the end of his life. We will examine this in part three of this paper, where we consider how Keynes viewed economics in the first decade of our century. We will show that certain important themes in his economic reflections, his view of laissez-faire in particular, are clearly present in early works, and that the methods he would later apply to economic studies were built up at that date. In the last part of this paper, we will turn to Keynes’s early theoretical economics, examining in particular his reflections on the quantity theory of money, in his lectures notes. We will show that his position towards this theory -- at least in its most simplified version -- was already somewhat critical at that early stage, drawing on his philosophical and methodological views.Keynes, History, Economic Thought

Fluctuat nec mergitur or what happened to Reikian psychoanalysis?

The official published version can be obtained from the link below - Copyright @ 2006 American Psychological AssociationAlthough Theodor Reik was a celebrated psychoanalyst during the 1950s and 1960s, his work has not resulted in the development of a specific psychoanalytic tradition, and his name has gradually disappeared from Western cultural memory. Following the mode of argumentation of the reductio ad absurdum, the author critically examines six possible explanations for this remarkable observation, thereby drawing on published materials and archival sources relating to the life and works of Reik. Once these explanations have been discarded, the author argues that the main reason for the absence of a Reikian tradition within psychoanalysis stems from Reik's belief in the analytic virtue of intellectual independence. This belief may have contributed to his own departure from the psychoanalytic training institution that he helped to create, yet it also implies that Reikian psychoanalysis somehow lives on in all those practitioners who do not seek to affiliate with a doctrinal school of thought

B. R. Ambedkar's contribution to the history of provincial decentralization of imperial finance

The present paper studies and evaluates Dr. Ambedkar's pioneering contribution to the origin and development of provincial finance during the British period. It also discusses his opinion regarding different stages of decentralization, and compares it with that of M.G. Ranade, one of the earliest writers on the subject. Towards the end, an effort has been made to investigate the main causes in Ambedkar's opinion that led to the enactment of the Reform Act of 1919 which marked the beginning of the modem history of public finance in India. It will also examine Dr. Ambedkar's view on financial relationship between the centre and the provinces.Ambedkar’s Economic Ideas, Decentralization of provincial finance in British India, Public Finance, Economic History of India, Indian Economic Thought.

“When a woman speaks the truth about her body”: Ethel Smyth, Virginia Woolf, and the challenges of lesbian auto/biography

As professionals who encountered first-hand the invidious barriers within patriarchal society that hindered career women, Ethel Smyth and Virginia Woolf both used their published writings to pursue lifelong crusades against the under-representation of females in their respective disciplines. This article compares the different strategies by which the two artists strove to tell the truth about their experiences as women, and considers the corresponding implications for Smyth’s musical output. While the egotistical Smyth candidly recounted stories relating to herself, Woolf excised overt authorial presence from her texts, instead invoking fictitious, protean narrators to reflect the collective unconsciousness of Womanhood. Woolf’s encouragement and criticism of Smyth’s literary endeavours are examined in the context of her biographical theories and feminist critiques, and of the lesbian proclivities of both women. Their published writings and personal documents suggest that Smyth actively appealed to the very autobiographical strategies that Woolf persistently counselled her to subvert, in order to compete with the (heterosexual) patriarchy on equal terms. She apparently held this option to be the only available one through which to insinuate herself within the canonical traditions specific to music, as distinct from those of literature

Effects of mindfulness meditation on conscious and non-conscious components of the mind

The aim of the present review is to investigate previous studies concerning the effects of meditation and dispositional mindfulness on conscious and implicit or non-conscious attitudes. First we present a brief perspective on conscious and non-conscious states of mind. Then we introducethefundamentalbasesofmindfulnessmeditation. Third we review studies on dispositional mindfulness and meditation that employed either direct or indirect measures to assess explicit and implicit attitudes. Finally, we briefly present how meditation has been associated with the psychotherapeutic practice of psychoanalysis and, hence, as a therapeutic technique to access the unconscious. Until now, few studies have investigated the impact of meditation on non-conscious states of mind and personality; nevertheless, both scientific studies involving implicit measures and reflections from psychotherapy have underlined the importance of meditation in promoting psychological well-being, leading to de-automatization of automatic patterns of responding and to higher levels of self-awareness

A ghost tour in Rouge = 遊魂《胭脂扣》

This paper discusses how Fleur\u27s association to some of the worldwide ghost tours insinuates the haunting quality of the past, time, and the cityscape; in other words, it discusses how the tragic love story between Fleur and Twelfth Master can also be allegorically read as a tragic cultural story of Hong Kong. This discussion allegorically reads Fleur, Twelfth Master and Yuen as figures hauled by modernity

Styling the Future. A philosophical account of scenarios & design

Since the end of the 1980s – the Decade of Style (Mort, 1996) – the value of style in design has fallen. Recent times (Whicher et al., 2015) see a focus on style as a sign of design’s immaturity, while a more mature design should be attending to process, strategy and policy creation. Design Thinking has been enjoying its success in the same spirit, where it is championed (Brown, 2008; Martin, 2009; Neumeier, 2009) as a way of taking design away from its early stage as ‘mere’ styling, towards the more thoughtful, serious matters of business. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze is of a different mind however. ‘Style,’ he writes (1995, p.31), ‘amounts to innovation.’ For us this engages not only a rethinking of design practice in particular, but also a reconsideration of the guiding principles of scenario planning. Deleuze’s thought entails the opportunity for styling to be an act that participates in driving all creativity towards making a successful future impact (Flynn & Chatman, 2004; Cox, 2005). A philosophical disruption of current design and scenarios orthodoxies offers a way of considering that style has a key role in the production of the future. Here, then, we will investigate the creative, even innovative, opportunities that emerge from a reworking of the value of style that comes from a critique of Design Thinking, a perspective on future-thinking (especially scenario planning (e.g. Schwartz, 1991; Li, 2014; Ramírez & Selin, 2014), but also some work from organisation and management studies (e.g. Tsoukas, 2005a, 2005b)), and an encounter with philosophy (particularly the work of Deleuze & Guattari (1984, 1987, 1994). We will highlight the affective capacities of style – in design and scenarios, both as creative constructing of futures – by way of creatively accessing uncertainty, complexity and indeterminacy in the production of strategic maps for living (both individuals and organisations)

Screened history: nostalgia as defensive formation

This article reconsiders the much-lauded transformative potential of nostalgia and proposes that an adequately psychological engagement with nostalgia is necessary if the critical capacities of this phenomenon are to be adequately assessed. To do this, the article identifies parallels between the concept of nostalgia and a series of psychoanalytic concepts (the imaginary, fetishism, fantasy, affect, screen-memories, and retroaction). Such a comparative analysis allows both for a critique of sociological notions of nostalgia and a series of speculations on how nostalgia as a defensive formation may aid rather than overcome types of structured forgetting. The use of psychoanalytic concepts enables us to grasp how nostalgia may operate: 1) in the economy of the ego, 2) in the mode of the fetish, 3) in the service of fantasy, 4) as an affect concealing anxiety, 5) as screen-memory, and 6) as means of reifying the past or present rather than attending to relations of causation obtaining between past, present, and future. One should thus investigate each of these possible defensive functions within any given instance of nostalgia before proclaiming its transformative potential

The Communist Party and the New Party

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Contemporary British History, vol. 23(4), 2009, pp.477-491 copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13619460903198101The New Party was never at the centre of the concerns of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). However, the CPGB had to take a line on the new organisation when it was formed, and tried to use it to smear Labour and Independent Labour Party politicians as enemies of the working class. As the 1931 political crisis unfolded, the New Party became increasingly an irrelevance at the side of the much more tangible threat of the National government, although communists did campaign against Mosley in late 1931. Ultimately, the New Party was significant for the communists because it seemed to offer some vindication of the 'class against class' line; because it suggested that the CPGB was not always wrong in its analysis; because it led to increased attention to the party's youth movement; and because it led to the leading left-wing polemicist of the 1930s, John Strachey, working with the CPGB for almost a decade