Strange journey : the life of Dorothy Eckersley

Three days before the outbreak of the Second World War, William Joyce, the leader of the British Nazi group, the National Socialist League, was in Berlin. He and his wife, Margaret, had fled there fearing internment by the British government if war broke out. Yet as war drew nearer, Joyce was unsure whether to return to Britain or not. But a meeting that day sealed his fate, leading to years of broadcasting for German radio, notoriety as ‘Lord Haw Haw', and his execution for treason in January 1946. The meeting was accidental, with the Joyces bumping into one of his English supporters - Mrs Frances ‘Dorothy' Eckersley - in a Berlin restaurant. Dorothy Eckersley was surprised to see Joyce, to whom she had recently sent £50 to help the NSL find a new headquarters in London. Now, having a far better network of friends and acquaintances in Berlin than the almost friendless Joyces, she was able to put him in touch with officials who recruited Joyce to the radio propaganda microphone. And by the end of 1939, Dorothy, and her son, James, would join the English language team broadcasting German propaganda to the UK. At 46, Dorothy had already led an extraordinary life that had taken her from the stage in America to the microphone in Berlin, marriage with one of the most gifted radio engineers of the time, and years of political activism with the radical socialist Independent Labour Party. Yet now she was a committed follower of Hitler and a national socialist..

Transformation of science and technology systems into systems of innovation in Central and Eastern Europe: the emerging patterns and determinants

This paper explores patterns of transformation of socialist Science and Technology (S&T) systems into post-socialist systems of innovation and their determinants. First, we reinterpret the socialist period from a system of innovation perspective by revisiting the socialist S&T system, and by pointing to its general features as well as to its national and sectoral variations. Second, we develop a conceptual model to help to understand the factors that are determining the emergence of systems of innovation. Systems of innovation in central and eastern Europe (CEE) are being shaped through the interaction of micro-specific, sectoral, national and regional determinants. At present, sectoral differences and micro-specific determinants seem to be the strongest in this process. The process of development and selection of network organisers is at the core of the emergence of systems of innovation in CEE. The most active network organisers are foreign firms. New production and innovation networks, especially in central Europe, are most often foreign-led

Labor Culture: Labor Morality under Socialism

Soviet leaders had always taken a keen interest in workers\u27 behavior and labor motives and sought to keep labor morality under strict state control. A complex network of values and regulations was developed for this purpose after the October Revolution of 1917. They were best articulated in the political economy of socialism which purported to present a scientific picture of the country\u27s economic life. Textbooks on socialist economy were widely circulated in the Soviet Union and appropriate courses included into a core curriculum for all higher education institutions in the country. Basic tenets of socialist political economy were taught in introductory social science classes in high schools. Leading educators helped popularize the subject, while major research centers in the nation continued to perfect the science of socialist economics. A prominent place in socialist political economy was given to work ethics, labor motives, employment opportunities, reward structure and other characteristics which formed socialist labor culture. In this chapter, I shall examine socialist labor morality, the relationship between the official Soviet blueprints and unofficial realities, the changes that socialist labor culture underwent in recent years, and the emerging trends in labor morality and work ethics in post-Soviet society

The construction of a socialist city by East German engineers in the late 1950s

In the late 1950s, hundreds of East German engineers moved to the North Korean city of Hamhung to help with urban reconstruction after the Korean War; they were known as the ‘German Work Team Hamhung’. However, research on cross-border propagation of city planning for mass demonstrations appears to be non-existent. Therefore, this study investigates the square and street network designed for mass demonstrations in Hamhung and evaluates it from a socialist city planning history perspective. The research findings revealed the following: The reconstruction plan of Hamhung as a socialist city in the latter half of the 1950s had characteristics similar to the socialist cities of the Soviet Union (early 1930s) and East Germany (early 1950s). German architects contributed transnationally to the construction of socialist cities. In particular, in the case of Hamhung, the presence of Konrad Püschel was substantive. As mentioned above, although the East German engineers followed the concept and methodology in the aforementioned socialist states, they adapted them to the local circumstances that were ascertained by detailed preliminary survey work. Their activities represent the unconsidered aspect of the global/worldwide spread of the concept and methodology of socialist city planning

Do Blurred Institutional Organisation and Inconsistent Policy Agendas Hinder Urban Development of Post-Socialist Neighbourhoods in Serbia? MAS-ANT Method of Analysis

In transitional countries, the course of merging socialist and neoliberal socio-economic condition, regulatory practices and organizational solutions led to inefficiently operationalized and inconsistently formalized institutional reforms rather known as “growth without development”. Included in this range of spatially and economically turbulent surroundings, post-socialist cities in transitional countries have undergone highly dramatic change in political, economic and social terms. This paper interprets blurred regulatory framework of post-socialist cities in Serbia through an assemblage methodological approach which combines Multi-agent system (MAS) procedure from computer science and Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) on social networks. Generally speaking, any built environment always reflects political and economic processes, especially in turbulent social times such as the disintegration of Yugoslavia’s political system and the introduction of new context of market economy, decentralized administrative powers and a lack of investment and resources. Dramatic shifts in social organization and spatial transformations result in the incapacity of the post-socialist planning to define contextually appropriate and coherent urban management for tracing its chaotic urban development pattern. Conversely, with the huge socio-cultural base inherited from the socialist period, cities in transitional countries have continued to be centres of economic growth with a variety of services, expansion, technological innovation and cultural diversity. Therefore, the post-socialist period in these cities contains prevailing characteristics of the disintegration of the preceding system rather than a coherent vision of what should follow. The post-socialist urban governance fails substantially through the lack of consensus on priority goals, action-oriented implementation and horizontal and vertical coordination. Tracing institutional articulation of post-socialist context through MAS-ANT methodology involves structural analysis of administrative procedures and content analysis of policy agendas to systematically deconstruct local urban governance in terms of political, economic and cultural aspects of transition with a multitude of actors, variety of interests, conflicted strategies and fragmented implementation. Multi-agent System serves as a generative bottom-up topography of the complex urban reality while Actor-Network Theory flattens the social into a panoptic internalized ontology. The schema thereafter involves taking into account all active agents regardless of their sort and form of social manifestation (ANT) and notwithstanding theoretical bias of their interdependencies and interconnections (MAS). Finally, this dynamics of relations and influences between different layers of decision making and urban key agents indicates opportunities for altering post-socialist urban planning by analysing in which manner regulatory framework relates to urban actors and address spatial issues, and what urban patterns and social impact result from these actions and induce building a spatial and social vision. In the long run, the identification of relations and influences on post-socialist urban governance examines how urban actors, space and regulatory framework rely on planning and decision support systems as means to forecast and orchestrate any movement or change of the system

SOME ASPECTS OF SOCIALIST MODERNIZATION IN THE CROATIAN CITIES

The paper focuses on the period of socialist modernization in Croatian urban settings, in a country guided by ideologically shaped administrative measures, absence of social pluralism, and private economic initiatives. The socialist regime mainly promoted the announced transformation of social and economic relations, as well as technical progress, in the urban areas, where cultural and symbolic interventions took place along with the technical ones. The socialist city was to become an ideal city that met all the needs of the “working people”. Industrialization and urbanization caused labour migration from rural to urban areas. Due to the large number of new residents in the cities, the authorities paid much attention to housing policies. Accelerated construction resulted in a discrepancy with the existing urban and communal infrastructure. The consequences of half a century of socialist modernization in the cities were most evident in the altered population structure. At the beginning of the observed period, only one quarter of the population lived in cities, but when the socialist epoch ended, this ratio was over 50 %. The negative consequences of socialist modernization in the cities could be seen in the polarized development of the main urban centres, the unevenly developed network of medium-sized and small towns, and the depopulation of a significant part of rural areas

Sailing in troubled waters : drinking water provision in Timisoara ; paper for the conference 'Alltag der Globalisierung. Perspektiven einer transnationalen Anthropologie', January 16-18, 2003, Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main

After more than a decade of post-socialist transition, transition theories are increasingly criticised for their inability to grasp the new post-socialist reality. However, even in the light of political, economic, social and cultural restructuring processes taking place on a global scale, the structural legacies of socialist and pre-socialist development are not erased. On the contrary, they continue to play an important role by filtering the impact of global tendencies upon post-socialist societies. With reference to a case study from the Romanian city of Timisoara I will address in the following the ambivalencies connected to the efforts of local elites in the process of implementing global-level requirements in a post-socialist environment

Constructing and Crossing Boundaries in a New (?) Europe

During the last two decades, discourses over the transition process shifted toward a theoretical diversity and a deeper understanding of ‘how modernity was reworked in postsocialist context’. It was widely argued that changing social relations were shaped not only by norms and institutions of Neoliberal capitalism, but also by established networks, institutional and regulatory structures and actors that/who gave diverse responses to the profound and thorough transformation of the society. This paper aims at understanding how geopolitical discourses over the Balkan and its place in the ‘new Europe’ shaped social relations and produced daily practices nested into those webs, through the perception and interpretations of post-socialist transformation by Hungarian migrants who left the war-hit Yugoslavia

Theory, reality, and possibilities for a digital/communicative socialist network society

Digital capitalism is guided by the organising principles of digital automation, information processing, and communication. It rests on the consolidation of relations of exploitation of digital labour based on flexibility and generating precarity. It makes profit from user data under conditions of surveillance. What would an alternative paradigm look like? This paper aims to sketch a possible socialist society resting on digital technology but organised on a different logic, namely that of autonomous production, leisure, and social engagement. It draws on relevant theories of the Left, evaluates them against the reality of digital capitalism, and suggests structural and user practice alternatives that can pave the way towards a digital/communicative socialism. This paper engages with the works of Czech philosopher Radovan Richta (1924-1983) and Austrian-French philosopher André Gorz (1923-2007). It shows that their ideas on the scientific and technological revolution and post-industrial socialism are highly relevant for the analysis and discussion of digital/communicative socialism

The politics of new technology

A recent article explains how one of the most militant workforces in the country, car workers at British Leyland's Longbridge plant, came to have its spirit of resistance broken. There are several reasons: the failure to mobilise members in response to the sacking of the union convenor late in 1979, the aggressive management tactics of Michael Edwardes, mass unemployment, the combativity of the Thatcher government. However, what the authors of this New Society piece single out as 'the real turning point' was the introduction of new technology which forced on the unions 'flexibility' by deskilling jobs, massively increasing output, and introducing an electronic information network called Machine Monitoring System that resulted in much greater surveillance of individual employees