Occupy: in theory and practice

This paper situates the discourse of the Occupy movement within the context of radical political philosophy. Our analysis takes place on two levels. First, we conduct an empirical analysis of the ‘official’ publications of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and Occupy London (OL). Operationalising core concepts from the framing perspective within social movement theory, we provide a descriptive-comparative analysis of the ‘collective action frames’ of OWS and OL. Second, we consider the extent to which radical political philosophy speaks to the discourse of Occupy. Our empirical analysis reveals that both movements share diagnostic frames, but there were notable differences in terms of prognostic framing. The philosophical discussion suggests that there are alignments between anarchist, post-anarchist and post-Marxist ideologies at the level of both identity and strategy. Indeed, the absence of totalising anti-capitalist or anti-statist positions in Occupy suggests that – particularly with Occupy London – alignments are perhaps not so distant from typically social democratic demands

No measure for culture? Value in the new economy

This paper explores articulations of the value of investment in culture and the arts through a critical discourse analysis of policy documents, reports and academic commentary since 1997. It argues that in this period, discourses around the value of culture have moved from a focus on the direct economic contributions of the culture industries to their indirect economic benefits. These indirect benefits are discussed here under three main headings: creativity and innovation, employability, and social inclusion. These are in turn analysed in terms of three forms of capital: human, social and cultural. The paper concludes with an analysis of this discursive shift through the lens of autonomist Marxist concerns with the labour of social reproduction. It is our argument that, in contemporary policy discourses on culture and the arts, the government in the UK is increasingly concerned with the use of culture to form the social in the image of capital. As such, we must turn our attention beyond the walls of the factory in order to understand the contemporary capitalist production of value and resistance to it. </jats:p

Real-Time control of sheet stability during forming

During the stamping of complex three-dimensional sheet metal parts, the in-plane compressive stresses created often lead to failure by buckling. These are typically suppressed by binding the material at the periphery to provide a tensile bias. In practice, these biases are difficult to determine, and must be addressed with a combination of a priori analysis and die-making skill. Even then, in-process variations Introduction Three-dimensional sheet forming is a highly productive process capable of forming complex shapes at high rates. However, this productivity comes at the expense of lengthy and costly tooling development. A primary element of this tooling is the &quot;blankholder&quot; which provides the in-plane tensile bias necessary to avoid buckling failure of the sheet caused by in-plane compressive strains. Blankholder design is complicated not only by the difficult contours involved, but also by the critical nature of sheet stability in such bi-axial strain conditions. As a result, sheet-forming production is often disrupted by tensile or compressive instabilities (tearing and wrinkling failures) caused by incorrect blankholder forces. Despite careful design and optimization, variations in lubrication, material properties, and blankholder wear can drive a process into an unstable region of operation. This paper treats the problem of sheet stability as a real-time process control problem. The objective is to keep the margins of process stability within acceptable limits even when the abovementioned disturbances occur. The approach taken here is largely empirical, and is based on the concept of trajectory or signature following. In this method, two accessible measures of process performance (punch force and flange draw-in) are monitored during &quot;optimal&quot; forming conditions. In subsequent forming cycles, the process is forced to follow these trajectories, and the blankholder force is modulated to accomplish real-time tracking. The key issues become robustness of the scheme to the expected variations and the ability to apply the method to general processes. In earlier reports on this work Background Research into the stability of sheet metal forming has concentrated on topics such as material properties, circular grid strain analysis, forming limit diagrams, finite element analysis, strain path corrections, and shape analysis. Below is a brief review of studies involving tearing, buckling, and forming limits, concentrating on those of direct relevance to the conical cup geometry. The frequently used forming limit diagram, developed by Goodwin (1968) and Keeler (1969), is a good indicator of the tearing strains in plane strain, loading. For a given material, these diagrams are developed by using a hemispherical punch stretch test and plotting the circumferential and radial strains

50 Years of Test (Un)fairness: Lessons for Machine Learning

Quantitative definitions of what is unfair and what is fair have been introduced in multiple disciplines for well over 50 years, including in education, hiring, and machine learning. We trace how the notion of fairness has been defined within the testing communities of education and hiring over the past half century, exploring the cultural and social context in which different fairness definitions have emerged. In some cases, earlier definitions of fairness are similar or identical to definitions of fairness in current machine learning research, and foreshadow current formal work. In other cases, insights into what fairness means and how to measure it have largely gone overlooked. We compare past and current notions of fairness along several dimensions, including the fairness criteria, the focus of the criteria (e.g., a test, a model, or its use), the relationship of fairness to individuals, groups, and subgroups, and the mathematical method for measuring fairness (e.g., classification, regression). This work points the way towards future research and measurement of (un)fairness that builds from our modern understanding of fairness while incorporating insights from the past.Comment: FAT* '19: Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* '19), January 29--31, 2019, Atlanta, GA, US

The ethical challenge of Touraine's 'living together'

In Can We Live Together? Alain Touraine combines a consummate analysis of crucial social tensions in contemporary societies with a strong normative appeal for a new emancipatory 'Subject' capable of overcoming the twin threats of atomisation or authoritarianism. He calls for a move from 'politics to ethics' and then from ethics back to politics to enable the new Subject to make a reality out of the goals of democracy and solidarity. However, he has little to say about the nature of such an ethics. This article argues that this lacuna could usefully be filled by adopting a form of radical humanism found in the work of Erich Fromm. It defies convention in the social sciences by operating from an explicit view of the 'is' and the 'ought' of common human nature, specifying reason, love and productive work as the qualities to be realised if we are to move closer to human solidarity. Although there remain significant philosophical and political differences between the two positions, particularly on the role to be played by 'the nation', their juxtaposition opens new lines of inquiry in the field of cosmopolitan ethics

The New ‘Hidden Abode’: Reflections on Value and Labour in the New Economy

In a pivotal section of Capital, volume 1, Marx (1976: 279) notes that, in order to understand the capitalist production of value, we must descend into the ‘hidden abode of production’: the site of the labour process conducted within an employment relationship. In this paper we argue that by remaining wedded to an analysis of labour that is confined to the employment relationship, Labour Process Theory (LPT) has missed a fundamental shift in the location of value production in contemporary capitalism. We examine this shift through the work of Autonomist Marxists like Hardt and Negri, Lazaratto and Arvidsson, who offer theoretical leverage to prize open a new ‘hidden abode’ outside employment, for example in the ‘production of organization’ and in consumption. Although they can open up this new ‘hidden abode’, without LPT's fine-grained analysis of control/resistance, indeterminacy and structured antagonism, these theorists risk succumbing to empirically naive claims about the ‘new economy’. Through developing an expanded conception of a ‘new hidden abode’ of production, the paper demarcates an analytical space in which both LPT and Autonomist Marxism can expand and develop their understanding of labour and value production in today's economy. </jats:p

Resistance and the "Post-Recognition" Turn in Organizations

I will draw on the contributions of Courpasson (2016) and Hardy (in press) to reflect on the nature of resistance in contemporary organizations and extend the discussion by focusing on why and how actors might resist today. In particular, I propose that some types of resistance are motivated by what I label post-recognition politics rather than traditional struggles to be recognized, heard, and listened to. Hence the prominent theme of exit, escape, and social independence in emancipatory discourses designed to refuse work and employment today

Global weak solution and large-time behavior for the compressible flow of liquid crystals

The three-dimensional equations for the compressible flow of liquid crystals are considered. An initial-boundary value problem is studied in a bounded domain with large data. The existence and large-time behavior of a global weak solution are established through a three-level approximation, energy estimates, and weak convergence for the adiabatic exponent $\gamma>\frac32$