14,420 research outputs found
Capital\u27s Offense: Law\u27s Entrenchment of Inequality
Reviewing Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press, 2014)
Pikettyâs Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a rare scholarly achievement. It weaves together description and prescription, facts and values, economics, politics, and history, with an assured and graceful touch. So clear is Pikettyâs reasoning, and so compelling the enormous data apparatus he brings to bear, that few can doubt he has fundamentally altered our appreciation of the scope, duration, and intensity of inequality. This review explains Pikettyâs analysis and its relevance to law and social theory, drawing lessons for the re-emerging field of political economy.
The university enables interdisciplinary work, and political economy is an ideally hybrid discursive space for this process of mutual inspiration and correction. Lawyers are particularly well-suited to the task of studying political economy, because we are the ones drafting, interpreting, and applying the rules governing the interface between state actors and firms. Integrating the long-divided fields of politics and economics, a renewal of modern political economy could unravel problems inadequately addressed by narrower specializations. Pikettyâs work shows how inquiries in both law and political economy will be enriched by their interaction
Ice Cream
Ice Cream is a series of 2D and 3D depictions of lawn ornaments, Charlie Brown, and novelty ice cream bars, which question how White America is indoctrinated through seemingly innocuous images and objects. The exhibition unveils the white supremacy fostered within the American way of life and articulates an environment where Americans act in racist ways when they believe they are acting morally. The research found within Ice Cream attempts to dismantle the foundation these justifications are built upon. This honesty, coupled with acknowledging that these historic traditions are rooted in racial constructs, will result in a double consciousness and the ability to move toward building an inclusive human community
Evolution of Online User Behavior During a Social Upheaval
Social media represent powerful tools of mass communication and information
diffusion. They played a pivotal role during recent social uprisings and
political mobilizations across the world. Here we present a study of the Gezi
Park movement in Turkey through the lens of Twitter. We analyze over 2.3
million tweets produced during the 25 days of protest occurred between May and
June 2013. We first characterize the spatio-temporal nature of the conversation
about the Gezi Park demonstrations, showing that similarity in trends of
discussion mirrors geographic cues. We then describe the characteristics of the
users involved in this conversation and what roles they played. We study how
roles and individual influence evolved during the period of the upheaval. This
analysis reveals that the conversation becomes more democratic as events
unfold, with a redistribution of influence over time in the user population. We
conclude by observing how the online and offline worlds are tightly
intertwined, showing that exogenous events, such as political speeches or
police actions, affect social media conversations and trigger changes in
individual behavior.Comment: Best Paper Award at ACM Web Science 201
The single currency and European citizenship
We could expect that the introduction of the single currency had been accompanied by a significant share of studies and researches about the implications and impacts of such a watershed event on European citizenship. On the contrary, we soon discover to be facing a paradox, which could be phrased as follows: while the purpose of building European citizenship is the very rationale for the project of the single currency, the Scholars â but also the policy community â have mostly underestimated if not neglected this relation, both in terms of public policy making and discourse and of interpretation and forecasting. As a consequence of all of that, relevant features of the single currency happened to remain hidden, poorly considered and almost not thematized. In order to fill this gap, the first part of this article will present the main findings emerged from a documentary research conducted by FONDACA between 2010 and 2011, aimed at mapping the existing academic and policy thematizations about the hidden dimensions of the euro. The second part will be devoted to define âthe other side of the coinâ as an empirical phenomenon
Dematerialization and capital maintenance: Two sides of the sustainability coin
The reductionist trend of equalizing sustainable development with CO2control needs to be reversed - notwithstanding the significance of climate change. Conventional, 'compartmentalized' data systems impede an integrated vision andtreatment of the paradigm. New accounts and balances focus on the interactionbetween environment and economy. 'Greened' national accounts measure economic sustainability in terms of (produced and natural) capital maintenance; balances of material flows assess ecological sustainability as the dematerializationof production and consumption. Both concepts aim to preserve environmentalassets. They differ however with regard to the scope, strength and evaluation ofsustainability. First results for Germany indicate weak sustainability of theeconomy, owing to an increasing capital base. Strong sustainability is not in sight,though, since material throughput has not been reduced sufficiently. An 'Alliancefor Sustainable Development' is proposed to implement and sustain the paradigm. --Dematerialization,capital maintenance,sustainability,environmental accounting,eco-tax,alliance for sustainable development
A divide-and-conquer strategy using feature relevance and expert knowledge for enhancing a data mining approach to bank telemarketing
The discovery of knowledge through data mining provides a valuable asset for addressing decision making problems. Although a list of features may characterize a problem, it is often the case that a subset of those features may influence more a certain group of events constituting a sub-problem within the original problem. We propose a divide-and-conquer strategy for data mining using both the data-based sensitivity analysis for extracting feature relevance and expert evaluation for splitting the problem of characterizing telemarketing contacts to sell bank deposits. As a result, the call direction (inbound/outbound) was considered the most suitable candidate feature. The inbound telemarketing sub-problem re-evaluation led to a large increase in targeting performance, confirming the benefits of such approach and considering the importance of telemarketing for business, in particular in bank marketing
Older adult education in a Maltese University of the Third Age : a critical perspective
The education of older adults has been considered the fastest growing branch of adult education in post-industrial countries and one of the most crucial challenges facing current adult European education. It has generated a significant number of research projects and publications seeking to analyse the character of third age learning. This article represents a further attempt, in Sandra Cusackâs words, to root down the
expansion of older adult education programmes in âCritical Educational Theoryâ, as a distinct form of âCritical Sociological Theoryâ. Critical field research was carried out at the University of the Third Age (U3A) in Valletta (Malta), due to the fact that the U3A represents one of the most successful and important educational programmes specifically developed for older people. Data were interpreted through Paulo Freireâs critical pedagogy and critical educational gerontological theory. The study revealed that despite the often reported positive functions of U3A for older persons and society in
general, the Valletta U3A is grounded in mainstream and traditional models of educational practice which equate education as a one-way flow of information from teachers to students. The study concluded that as a result of such a âbankingâ ideology, the U3A fails to act as an archetype of transformative education but is yet another euphemism for glorified occupational therapy that is both conservative and oppressive.peer-reviewe
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