85 research outputs found
Book Review: Banking Currency, and Finance in Europe Between the Wars: Banking Currency, and Finance in Europe Between the Wars. Edited by FeinsteinCharles H.. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995, Pp. xviii, 536
WilliamJ. Hausman, Peter Hertner, Mira Wilkins. Global Electrification: Multinational Enterprise and International Finance in the History of Light and Power, 1878-2007. (Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2008. Pp. xxiv, 487. $80.00
Book Review: L'émergence de la place financière suisse (1890-1913): itinéraire d'un grand banquier: MazbouriMalik L'émergence de la place financière suisse (1890-1913): itinéraire d'un grand banquier, (Lausanne: Editions Antipodes, 2005. 597 pp. €34)
Book Review: Les Grands Banquiers Belges: (1830-1935) Portrait Collectif d'une élite: Tilman Samuel . Les Grands Banquiers Belges: (1830-1935) Portrait Collectif d'une élite. Classe des Lettres. Bruxelles: Académie Royale de Belgique, 2005. 441 pp. ISBN 2-8031-0226-9, €40
Mimesis, scapegoating and financial crises: a critical evaluation of René Girard’s intellectual legacy
René Girard’s pathbreaking work, especially on mimetic (imitative) thought and behavior, can be used to reinforce Marxist explanations of financial crisis. Yet Girard’s concept of the scapegoat mechanism is less applicable to the modern world, and failure to recognize this can lead to confusion. A prime example is the contribution of the neo-Marxist scholar Henri Guénin-Paracini and his co-authors, who hold that the same mechanism Girard identified as existing in ancient times reconciles workers to contemporary capitalism’s financial crisis tendencies. A close analysis of their argument reveals that this mechanism explains nothing about post-crisis social reproduction. Nevertheless, Girardian cognizance of scapegoating and the persecutory impulse is useful in ensuring that resistance to financialization is depersonalized. Girard’s theory of mimesis, however, can contribute to a systemic account of factors leading to financial crises. In particular, his mimetic theory has the potential to bridge Keynesian and Marxist explanations of why such crises occur
The British Army, information management and the First World War revolution in military affairs
Information Management (IM) – the systematic ordering, processing and channelling of information within organisations – forms a critical component of modern military command and control systems. As a subject of scholarly enquiry, however, the history of military IM has been relatively poorly served. Employing new
and under-utilised archival sources, this article takes the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of the First World War as its case study and assesses the extent to which its IM system contributed to the emergence of the modern battlefield in 1918. It argues that the
demands of fighting a modern war resulted in a general, but not universal, improvement in the BEF’s IM techniques, which in turn laid the groundwork, albeit in embryonic form, for the IM systems of modern armies.
KEY WORDS: British Army, Information Management, First World War, Revolution in Military Affairs, Adaptatio
International Business in the Nineteenth Century: The Rise and Fall of a Cosmopolitan Bourgeoisie. By Charles A. Jones. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. xi + 260 pp. Notes and index. $45.00.
- …