Artists, art worlds and studios: a research note from Wales

This research note draws from ethnographic research on artistic practice in postdevolution Wales. More specifically it draws from observations, interviews and field notes gathered during encounters with artists ‘in-studio’. The research note explores the complex engagement between social researcher, biography and charismatic artist as a dialogic enterprise. This is then discussed in relation to the notions of art-worlds, the creative self and charisma as an accomplished and embodied social fact

Identity commitments in personal stories of mental illness on the Internet

The Internet augments the informational flows that organize biographies in late modernity. Sufferers of bipolar disorder (manic depression) may turn to the Internet for accessible information, to learn about others’ experiences and impart their own knowledge. Personal accounts posted in the public domain become themselves part of those informational flows, and thus acquire a dual life at a boundary between private and public domains. This poses certain challenges for the investigation of computer-mediated autobiographical telling, which are identified in this paper and negotiated in an analysis of downloaded personal accounts of bipolar disorder. Two of the stories are selected for a close look. Story 1 tells about achieving long-term remission through personal resolve and psychological alternatives to medication. Story 2 tells about becoming able to talk about the illness through the achievement of a social identity as ‘manic depressive’. The stories’ similarities, differences, and comparability with the other texts are discussed with a view to theorizing how such texts position their implied author in the illness experience. Building upon Bakhtin’s idea of a text’s plan and its realization, a concept of ‘identity commitments’ as textual properties is proposed

Corporate stakeholders and trust

To our knowledge, this is the first paper that investigates the links between trust, the institutional setting (in terms of employment protection legislation (EPL) and investor rights) and studies the impact of all three on economic performance. In line with the previous literature (e.g. Knack and Keefer (1997), Zak and Knack (2001)), we find that trust has a positive impact on GDP per capita growth. Our novel results are twofold. First, we find that EPL and investor rights have a negative relationship and that both (although the latter to a lesser extent) are substitutes for trust. Second, all three variables have a positive effect on economic growth

Monetary policy before and after the euro: evidence from Greece

We model Greek monetary policy in the 1990s and use our findings to address two interrelated questions. First, how was monetary policy conducted in the 1990s so that the hitherto highest-inflation EU country managed to join the euro by 2001? Second, how compatible is the current ECB monetary policy with Greek economic conditions? We find that Greek monetary policy in the 1990s was: (i) primarily determined by foreign (German/ECB) interest rates though still influenced, to some degree, by domestic fundamentals; (ii) involving non- linear output gap effects; (iii) subject to a deficit of credibility culminating in the 1998 devaluation. On the question of compatibility our findings depend on the value assumed for the equilibrium post-euro real interest rate and overall indicate both a reductio n in the pre-euro risk premium and some degree of monetary policy incompatibility. Our analysis has policy implications for the new EU members and motivates further research on fast-growing EMU economies

Commentary and translation in Syriac Aristotelian scholarship: Sergius to Baghdad

This article considers the relationship between the composition in Syriac of commentaries on Aristotle and the translation of his treatises from the time of Sergius of Reshaina through to the Baghdad scholars of the 8th-10th centuries. Surveying the work particularly of Sergius, the scholarly translators of Qenneshre, and the interests of Patriarch Timothy I as evidenced in his letters, it argues that the translation activity up to the 8th century must be seen within the context of a school tradition in which the Syriac text of Aristotle was read in association with a written or oral commentary, or with the Greek text, or both. An appreciation of the link between commentary and translation, as also Syriac and Greek, in Graeco-Syriac Aristotelian scholarship of the 6th-8th centuries enables a better understanding of its relationship to the Syro-Arabic Aristotelian scholarship of Abbasid Baghdad